


The Dilemma with the Drummer

by InkyStardust



Category: TWRP | Tupper Ware Remix Party (Band)
Genre: Betrayal, Blood + Injuries, Friendship issues, Jet Crashes, Mentioned Past Abuse / Neglect, Minor Character Deaths, Nightmares, Trust Issues, Violence, heated arguments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-10 00:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12900141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkyStardust/pseuds/InkyStardust
Summary: Desperate times call for desperate measures. When Meouch, Sung, and Phobos have trouble finding a drummer for their band, Sung decides to take matters into his own hands, and puts his faith into a mysterious, inert robot who he found lifeless in a cave, and plans to reprogram it into a drumming machine. Not only is this robot dangerously violent and homicidal when untamed, but beyond that, it’s mere presence in the home is causing tension between Meouch, Sung, and Phobos. One particular night, after Meouch accidentally sets it free, the boys have to stop it from creating havoc and destruction while they try to solve their own internal issues.





	1. A Fiery Introduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sung brings home something that doesn't quite sit well with Phobos or Meouch, and for good reason.

“Where the hell is Sung?”

Meouch asked the question as he made his way over to the sofa, and collapsed backwards onto the fluffy cushions. Phobos, who was sitting beside him, would only shrug in response, not even turning his head away from the TV screen that was glowing in front of them and illuminating the dark room. A marathon of _Guess That Galaxy!_ was playing on the Interuniversal Network channel, and before Sung took his mini-jet and went off to get milk and batteries from the store, they were all just relaxing and watching the game show together. It was a nice little treat after all the hard work they’d done that day.

Meouch dug his hand into the popcorn bowl sitting on Phobos’ lap, and shoved a handful of the salty treat into his mouth, crunching away. With a mouth half-full of popcorn, he continued. “It’s been, like, two hours. He only went to the supermarket.” After a short pause to swallow, he turned to Phobos and asked, “You think somethin’s wrong? He didn’t answer my text.”

Phobos took a moment to ponder the question, then took out his phone and began typing away. Only a few seconds had passed before his phone began to speak in a robotic tone, using the text-to-speech app:

“i doubt it. perhaps he simply strayed from his original plan to get only those two items, and started to pick up more things that we needed. you know how he can get sometimes.”

Meouch chuckled a bit. “Yeah, that’s true. You’re probably right.” His gaze returned back to the TV. “At least now we’re getting a break from his boasting about his _vaaaast_ knowledge of our universe.” He joked, and began laughing. Phobos silently chuckled at this, too.  

Sung always liked to jokingly flex his knowledge of the known galaxies in the universe, and tease Meouch and Phobos about how little they knew about the topic. Sometimes it would really get under Meouch’s skin for some reason, even though he knew it was all in jest- but nonetheless, it was one of the many things that made watching _Guess That Galaxy!_ a joyous time. Though, admittedly, now that Sung had been gone for a while, it wasn’t _as_ much fun as it was before. He missed him, secretly.

Phobos and Meouch stopped their short conversation there, and continued their watching spree of the game show, laughing and taking guesses as they watched. 

Their marathoning was eventually interrupted when Phobos suddenly perked up, and turned the volume on the TV down with the remote. When Meouch asked what was wrong, Phobos typed into his phone, and it spoke out, “don’t you hear his jet flying in?”

Meouch listened carefully. He _did_ hear the faint hum of Sung’s jet engine outside approaching their spaceship. “Oh, yeah, I hear him.” 

The two listened as the hum of the jet engine became gradually louder and louder- but something was off. The hum quickly became a loud whirring sound, then it became a heavy roar as it drew closer, sounding like the jet was coming in fast and hot. Sung was _never_ a speed-demon driver like this- unless the situation was dire.

Meouch twisted his face in concern and confusion, then turned to Phobos, who raised his hands in the air as a bewildered shrug. The hell is Sung doing? He’s not gonna slow down before he lands?! At this rate, he’s gonna crash onto the landing deck!

“What is he d--”

 

**_CRAAAASSSSHHHHH!_ **

 

Meouch’s sentence was interrupted by the deafening screech of metal booming through the entire spaceship. The room tremored violently from the impact, causing things to go tumbling off of tables and falling from the walls. Meouch’s eyes shot wide open as soon as he felt and heard the impact, and took no time scrambling off the couch onto his feet just as Phobos did. The duo ran frantically through the front door out onto the landing deck. 

The sight was nothing short of disastrous.

There, Sung’s jet lie engulfed in crackling flames, sending embers flying out into the vast black universe around them. The metal exterior was mangled up and twisted all sorts of ways, and some parts of it had been completely blown off and had landed in scraps nearby. 

Meouch’s heart sank harshly into his stomach at the sight. A wave of fear and dread fell over him- but his fears were dimmed a bit when he saw a bright orange cone poke up and out from the mangled mess.

Then, a hand was seen rising out of the wreckage, and grabbing onto the exterior of the jet. Sung strenuously pulled his upper body out of the jet, and brought his other hand up to grab onto the wreckage and stabilize himself. He hadn’t suffered any extreme injuries, miraculously, but he definitely had many cuts and scrapes all over his person. Even more miraculously, when Sung looked up and saw his bandmates standing at the front door, staring at him with horror stained on their faces, he had the audacity to _smile_ at them, that goofy, toothy smile of his. He even raised his hand in the air and began to wave.

“Hey, guys!!” Sung called out with joy, as if he hadn’t just been involved in a life-threatening jet crash.

Meouch and Phobos began running over to him, with no less anxiety about the situation as they had before.

“Sung, what the _hell!”_ Meouch yelled out as made his way over to his bandmate.

Sung opened his mouth to reply, but before he could utter any words, his smiley expression quickly sank into one of sudden dread.

Just as Phobos approached the wreckage and extended his hand out towards Sung, Sung was suddenly _yanked_ down into the mangled jet. He panickedly clawed and struggled to keep himself up, muttering _no, no, no_ to himself as he tried to grab Phobos’ hand, but whatever it was that was dragging him down was too strong. Sung was pulled back down into the wreckage with a loud scream.

Phobos threw himself onto the wreckage to try and catch Sung’s hand, but he was too late. He lightly slammed his hand on the jet’s exterior with frustration.

Meouch quickly climbed on top of the jet and gazed down into the dark space that Sung had disappeared into- and from what he could see, whatever pulled Sung back down was going to be a very huge problem.

In the near pitch blackness of the hole, a pair of red flickering lights darted around wildly. Meouch would catch glimpses of something reflective moving around, too, something metallic.The sound of creaking metal and banging blended with Sung’s increasingly alarming shrieks of panic and struggle. Sung’s arms would occasionally stretch out of the hole and flail around for assistance, only to be pulled back down again not even an entire second later.

On an impulse, Meouch fell to his knees, and stuck his hand inside the hole as an attempt to grab Sung’s hand. He waved his arm around, waiting for Sung to grab it.

He did feel something grab him, but it felt nothing like Sung.

An icy, rough hand clutched onto Meouch’s wrist, damn near breaking it from the sheer force of the grab. Meouch screamed, and tried to yank his arm free of the grasp, with no success. He continued to pull and pull, trying to keep his balance while attempting to escape the literal clutch of this… _thing._ Phobos went behind him and grabbed onto Meouch’s sides, pulling away to try and help out. With Phobos’ aid, Meouch was starting to gain more leverage over whatever had a hold on him. Their strength was slowly beginning to overpower that of this... uhh, parasite? God knows what they’re up against.

They got their first glimpse at it as soon as Meouch was finally able to squeeze his wrist out of its tight hold. He and Phobos were launched backwards after the release, landing on their backs with a _thud!_ on the ground. 

A loud clanking noise then erupted from the wreckage, and after Meouch was able to recuperate from his fall, he looked up and saw the creature standing on top of the jet. His eyes practically bulged out of his head once he gazed upon it.

The most notable thing about the creature right off the bat were its bright, glowing red eyes that were glaring down right into Meouch’s soul.

It’s head was made of a white metal exterior, though it was heavily rusted and scraped up. The head seemed more like a helmet, or maybe a mask of some sort, but to be quite honest with you, Meouch wasn’t really interested in the details of this thing’s appearance at the moment. All he could really fixate on were those piercingly vivid red lights glowing through the eye holes of the metal. He may have been imagining this, but one eye seemed to be vastly brighter than the other, twinkling much more fiercely in the darkness of the open universe around them.

Everything seemed so blurred and hazy. Was it from his state of daze from the fall, or was it fear? Maybe a bit of both? He wasn’t sure, but the glow from the fire burning in the wreckage beneath this monster gave its metallic face a menacing orange glow, a sight that would surely haunt Meouch’s nightmares for weeks.

With his heart racing and practically beating out of his chest, Meouch took just a second too long to stare at this terrifying thing. The only thing that broke him out of his dazed state was when the robot(?) hopped off of the wreckage with a loud creak, and began making its way over to Meouch’s direction.

Meouch immediately scrambled to get up and onto his feet, but as soon as he started to do so, the robot began to _run_ towards him with heavy, clanky footsteps. Panic rushing through his veins, Meouch stumbled a bit as he rose to his feet, turned around, and booked it in the opposite direction. 

The anxiety-inducing sound of metal feet pounding on the ground behind him sent his heart into a frenzy. God, he was _so_ not ready for this shit tonight. The footsteps were starting to sound closer, louder, increasing in intensity. And as this occurred, Meouch could see the red glow from it’s eyes creeping up on him in his peripheral vision. Just like the footsteps, the glow became more intense, more bright. The sound of metal against the floor became deafeningly close as it pounded against his eardrums.

But then, the footsteps began to slow down.

And the glow of his eyes seemed to flicker and dim suddenly. Within just a few seconds, the glow was gone, and so was the sound of footsteps behind him. Though, with his adrenaline still rushing through him, Meouch continued running for another couple of seconds. He eventually slowed down his pace until he stopped, and turned around to see what happened.

The robot, now a couple of yards away, seemed to have literally just… shut down? in the middle of sprinting. It was frozen in a running pose, one leg partially lifted in the air, and an arm stuck out. And most importantly, its eyes had stopped glowing. Well, mostly. The one eye that was brighter than the other was very faintly flickering in and out for just a few seconds until it cut out completely. Its eye holes were dark and hollow, now.

Now that that thing _wasn’t_ trying to kill him, Meouch was able to get a bit of a better view of it. It had a white chestplate that was made of the same metal exterior that its helmet was, as well as spiky shoulder pads that extended down into arm guards. It also had knee pads, padding on its thighs, and a belt, all made from the same metal, and all were rusted and worn. Underneath the metal exteriors was an all black figure of some sort.

A few feet behind the robot, Sung and Phobos slowed their running to a stop, then stood slightly bent over, gasping for air. Once he had enough of his breath back, Sung then continued forward and walked over to the robot, and stood in front of it to examine it.

 _He’s a lot braver than I am,_ thought Meouch to himself as he slowly made his way over to Sung. _Fuck that thing._

Sung stood beneath the towering contraption, checking its limbs and parts- for what reason, Meouch wasn’t sure. But once Sung was done with his quick examination of it, he turned around and was faced with Meouch, who was now standing in front of him. With a slight frown on his face, Sung put a hand on Meouch’s shoulder and asked in a quiet and grave tone,

“God, Meouch, are you okay?”

Meouch quickly nodded. “Besides my wrist being probably broken, and having a heart rate of, like, a million beats per second, I’m fine.” He shrugged and barely chuckled at his exaggeration. He then raised a concerned eyebrow and asked, “Are _you_ alright, dude?”

Sung looked like shit. Up close, Meouch got a better look at the scrapes and bruises he had. He was a bit bloodied up from the crash- and most likely from the robot’s attack, too. Crimson blood was smeared on his helmet and his battered body suit. Even his face seemed drained of its usual color, and not necessarily from blood loss, but from fear.

Sung paused, then said, “I will be, once we get that thing-” Here, he weakly pointed his thumb back at the robot. “-in and locked up.”

Meouch’s face twisted in confusion. “In? Whaddya mean ‘in?’ In where?”

“In… in my study lab.”

“In your _what_?” Meouch yelled. “You’re bringing THAT-” He pointed furiously at the robot. “thing into our home?! That just, fuckin’, tried to kill you! And me!”

Sung raised his hands in the air defensively. “I know! I know, but I- I-” He took a quick pause to think out his words. “I didn’t know it would cause so much mayhem! I thought I’d, ya know, bring it home, experiment, and see how it went from there! I didn’t plan for any of this to happen!” Sung threw his hands in the air, vaguely gesturing to the chaos around them. “I’m sorry! I really am!!”

Wait, so Sung _brought_ this thing here willingly!? Meouch went to respond, but had to facepalm and take in a deep breath to keep himself from exploding. “Okay, okay, I know you didn’t mean for this to happen. But what could you… _possibly_ have needed that thing for? You must’ve known how dangerous it was once you got it from, I dunno, wherever you got it. But… jeez, man, you could’ve really gotten hur--” Meouch cut himself off, and furrowed his face further. “Wait, what do you even need that for? How did you come across it? You only went to the store for-- fucking-- batteries and milk, for fuck’s sake! How’d you end up bringin’ back a fucking murderous robot monster!?” At this point, he was practically yelling.

“I’ll explain everything later!” Sung frustratedly said back. “Now help me get him ins--”

“NO!” Meouch interrupted, shaking his head furiously. “I’m NOT helping you bring him in!”

Sung stammered on his own confusion, and threw his hands in the air. “ _Listen_! The longer you argue with me, the more time it has to wake up again and try to kill us all again!”

“I’m not helping you bring that thing in until I _know_ why you need it!”

“We don’t have time for this!”

“I don’t care!! Tell me!!”

Phobos watched from a distance as the two argued, being a silent audience member to this fight. He took a few steps toward them.

Meouch could see Sung trying to keep his composure, his lips pressed firmly together and his hands shaking.

Sung hung his head, breathed out a puff through his nose, then snapped his head back up and lightly exclaimed, “FINE. I found- agh!- I discovered it in a cave, and I figured we could use it as a drummer, alright!”

Meouch’s eyes widened, and his face contorted with anger and bewilderment. It took him a few stammers to finally yell out, hands flying furiously around in frustration, “Are you _fucking_ **_kidding_ ** _me!!?_ YOU _CAN’T_ BE SERIOUS. THAT DOESN’T EVEN MAKE SENSE _!”_ Sung raised his hand and tried to say something, but Meouch stopped him before he could utter anything. “THIS IS ALL OVER THIS FUCKING DRUMMER SHIT?”

“ _I’M_ DOING WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE SINCE NO ONE ELSE IS GOING TO, SO EXCUSE ME FOR TAKING UP THE RESPONSIBILITY, _AS ALWAYS,”_ Sung gritted through his teeth in a loud whisper.

That shut Meouch up. He felt fury rising up in him, but no words were coming to mind or mouth, and that only irritated him more. Deep down, he knew that a) Sung was kinda right, and b) that Sung was only trying to help. But this was way out of hand.

Sung’s words from previous conversations echoed through Meouch’s head.

_“We can’t just wait around for a drummer to come along! We gotta put ourselves out there!”_

And Meouch would usually reply with something along the lines of, “ _Whoever our drummer is will come to us eventually, we shouldn’t force anything. The universe works in strange ways, Sung.”_

Though, admittedly, Meouch could understand his strife. It’d been a few months, and not much luck had come to them yet with all the advertising they’d done. But even still, Sung had no patience, and no right to go to these lengths. If Sung needs something that can’t be logically, mathematically, nor scientifically created or captured, he loses his shit and freaks the hell out.

And this was a prime example of that, case and point. 

Sung couldn’t find a drummer for TWRP, so he decided to bring home a homicidal robot monster and use that, instead. How practical.

And even though Sung had gone to extreme lengths over something small (this wouldn’t be the first time), Meouch still couldn’t be completely mad at him. Usually these things didn’t backfire this terribly- or at all. This was just a severely unlucky case.

Meouch could feel Sung glaring at him through his visor.

“Now, if you don’t wanna help, Phobos and I will carry him in. Hell, if I have to, I’ll do it all by myself.” And with that, Sung turned around and looked at Phobos, who was standing there watching the whole thing without making a peep.

“Phobos, will you help me carry him in, please?” Sung asked in an exhausted voice.

Phobos nodded, then walked over to the robot standing before him.

Meouch watched as Sung and Phobos looked and felt around the robot’s body, trying to figure out a way to pick it up.

Okay, Meouch might’ve felt a little bad.

Like, yeah, Sung was totally wrong and way outta hand for doing all of this and putting their lives in danger, but he really is looking out for the band. He’s been the one putting forth most of the effort to make themselves known and to find a drummer so that they could start doing real performances. Meanwhile, Meouch wasn’t really doing much to help the cause. He’d rather wait as long as it took for something to come along- and by that I mean sitting on the couch waiting for a phone call inquiry.

They both had some apologizing to do later. But for now, the best thing- or the least thing- Meouch could do was to help them get this thing inside.

That doesn’t mean that he’s all fine and dandy with a robot monster being in their house, but he knows that Sung is responsible and, for the most part, knows what he’s doing. How Sung plans to turn that thing into a drumming machine, is beyond Meouch’s comprehension. But he trusts Sung. He just goes way too far, sometimes.

Sung and Phobos were still pondering when Meouch approached them. They looked up at him, and Meouch simply asked, “Need a third pair o’ hands?”

 

\---

 

The sound of drills, hammers, and electric gadgets echoed from Sung’s laboratory for hours on end that night.

Phobos and Meouch were standing outside in the long white corridor that lead to his lab. Usually, whenever Sung was working on something in the lab, they wouldn’t stick around and wait for him, but in today’s case, they didn’t want to leave him completely alone with that thing. Sung even left the door open, which is something he’d _never_ do in a million years. Today was different, though. This way, if something happens to him in the lab, Meouch and Phobos would be right there to run in and help out. But thankfully, nothing did happen. From what they could hear, everything went fine, other than some problems with the tools or whatever.

A few hours passed before Sung finished. Phobos was sitting on the floor, and Meouch was leaning against the wall, looking at his phone. When Sung came out of the lab, the two of them looked up at him. Poor guy looked exhausted as hell. Sweat was pouring down his face, and even though it looked like he’d cleaned himself up a bit, there was still a tiny bit of smeared blood on him. He closed the door behind him, and it auto-locked with a _click!_ as soon as it shut. 

Phobos stood up, and Meouch pushed himself off the wall, putting his phone in his pocket.

“Everything go well?”

Sung sighed out a breath, and smiled wearily as he approached them. “Yup. It’s all bound up and secure. I made sure to remove any source of power or energy from its systems, so it won’t be waking up anytime soon.”

“Thank God.”

“Yeah.”

There was an awkward silence, but it was soon interrupted by the sound of Phobos’ phone.

“i’m just glad that we’re all okay. that was frightening.”

“Heh, yeah...” Sung nodded. He looked down, then said, “Hey, guys, I… I’m really sorry.” He looked up at the two of them. “I know I went too far with this whole thing, and I really put us in a lot of danger. That could’ve went wrong in so many ways. Well, it _did_ go wrong, but, heh, you know what I mean. It could’ve gone a lot worse, and… I was really irresponsible.” His shoulders sunk. “I only meant to help.”

“I know you did, buddy.” Meouch patted Sung’s arm.

Phobos’s phone spoke out, “we forgive you.”

Meouch reluctantly nodded to this. “Speaking of apologies, I, uhhhh...” Meouch’s voice trailed off into a lower, quieter tone as averted his gaze from Sung’s and scratched at his mane. “I may have gotten a bit heated at ya’ earlier. Sorry. I know you were just lookin’ out for the band.” He sighed. “Hope you didn’t take it personal.” He would’ve also apologized for his lack of effort into looking for a drummer, which could’ve prevented this whole mess, but he wasn’t really ready to admit that just yet.

Sung slowly nodded, and patted Meouch’s arm in return. “Apology accepted.”

“Just… don’t do any crazy shit like that again.” Meouch laughed a bit.

Sung laughed in response, and rubbed the back of his neck. “I won’t. Hopefully this’ll work out.”

“Right, so... how exactly _is_ this supposed to work out?”

Sung explained everything to Meouch and Phobos as they all walked down the long hallway leading to the living room.

Apparently, Sung was on his way to the store when his jet started to malfunction (he suspected it had something to do with the transmission). He decided to drive over to the closest place where he could land, and that happened to be a small dwarf planet. He explored a bit to see if he could find anyone and ask for help, and found no one; but while he was in a cave, he came across the machine. It was lying on the cave ground, and it looked like it had been there for many years, seeing as though it was heavily rusted and decayed.

“so you looked at that thing and thought, ‘hm, perhaps i can use this hunk of rusting metal as a drummer! a perfect solution!’” Phobos’ phone rang out in a monotone voice. 

“I’m gonna hope and pretend that wasn’t sarcasm, Phobos.” Sung turned his head to Phobos and shot him a quick look of skepticism, then smiled and chuckled lightly. By now, the trio had just reached the door at the end of the hallway. Sung opened it, and began walking inside the living room with his bandmates trailing behind him. He darted his eyes around the room to examine the mess made from the crash’s impact. “But to some extent, yes. It struck me as intriguing, and I figured that I shouldn’t let an unused robot go to waste. Then, it hit me- I can reprogram it into a drummer! It’ll take a lot of experimentation first, but I can make it work!”

As the three of them came to a stop in the middle of the living room, Sung went on to finish off with, “So I loaded it into my jet, and brought it back home. It didn’t bother me or do anything for the entire ride. But on my way back, my jet started acting up again, and that’s how I ended up crash-landing. I still don’t know how or why the robot woke up after that, though…” Sung let his voice trail off as he thought about this for a few seconds, then snapped back to his recounting of events. “And uhhh, the rest is history. Hehe.” Sung then let out a heavy sigh. “Wish I could go more in depth, but… I’m tuckered out.” He chuckled off the pain and exhaustion.

“Yeah, get some rest, man.” Meouch said in a concerned tone. “Clean yourself up first, though. Then get your rest.”

“Already planning to,” Sung replied. He softly groaned and began to make his way over to the staircase. “I’m gonna shower and go to bed. Love you guys. Sorry about everything. G’night.”

“Night, Sung.” Meouch waved as he watched Sung make his way up the stairs.

 “nighty night, sung.” Phobos’s phone said.

They watched Sung walk upstairs, then Meouch turned to Phobos and said, “You still wanna finish the marathon?”

Phobos looked over at Meouch for a few seconds with an unreadable expression (go figure). He then typed into his phone without turning away from Meouch, and it spoke out, “you can’t be serious.”

“What?” Meouch shrugged.

“that’s your biggest concern right now? after what just occurred?”

“Nothing we can really do about the homicidal robot in our home, and I gotta distract my mind from what just happened so, uhh… might as well, right?”

More blank staring from Phobos.

“... you’re unbelievable sometimes. but i can’t disagree with you. where’s the remote?”


	2. Too Much Spice at the Dinner Table

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rising tensions explode during the boys' dinner discussion. Lows blows are thrown and feelings get very hurt.

Those next few days and weeks were… _interesting,_ to say the least. Between the absence of Sung due to his endless experimentation on the robot, and the overall heavy tension lingering in the air, things weren’t looking too great.

The overbearing sound of power drills, hammers, electric saws, and other loud and obnoxious tools (along with, on some occasions, Sung’s shouts of pain and/or irritation) echoed from Sung’s laboratory for many days and nights on end. Even though his lab was a fair distance from the living area of the spaceship, the loud noises would still echo through the thin walls of the ship. Many a late night, Meouch would be lying awake in bed in the darkness of his room, head on his pillow, tired eyes open and staring at the wall, praying for the time that Sung would eventually get tired enough to stop working on that thing so that he could get some goddamned shut-eye.

The mornings after those sleepless nights, Meouch would be ready to tell Sung off, but by the time Meouch would wake up, he’d already be back in the laboratory working on that damned thing.

So for the most part, Sung was rarely ever seen those first few weeks, leaving Phobos and Meouch to practice their instruments and watch _Guess That Galaxy!_ and their other favorite TV shows on their own.

Meouch didn’t know how to feel.

On one hand, he was appreciative that Sung was putting so much effort into making their new drummer. But on the other hand, he was _pissed_ that Sung never spent time with them anymore.

Okay, yeah, maybe Meouch misses him just a bit. A tiny bit. Kinda, sorta, maybe.

But he’s still pissed about everything else. The sleepless nights, the fact that Sung thinks he can just stay to himself in that lab of his that no one else is allowed inside of, the extra work that he and Phobos had to pick up on because of Sung’s unavailability, everything. Hell, he was still slightly pissed that Sung had done all of this in the first place. And the fact that Meouch had to bottle it all inside made matters even worse.

It had been about three weeks before Sung was seen again- well, seen for more than just a few moments, at least.

That morning, Meouch was laid out on the couch playing a video game on TV in his pajamas, while Phobos was in the kitchen frying fish and chips for an early lunch.

When the two heard the jingle of the doorknob that lead to the hallway of Sung’s lab, they immediately darted their eyes over to the door. Could it be?

The door swung open, and there Sung stood.

Phobos and Meouch immediately froze.

“Sung?” Meouch called out, sitting up in the couch.

Sung sharply inhaled, then breathed a heavy sigh. He grabbed his helmet, and took it off, revealing dark, sunken, half-closed eyes and a sweaty pale face that screamed “I need a 40 hour nap.” He then let out another light sigh.

“I’m finally done.” He said in almost a whisper. “Well… mostly.”

Phobos put down the big spoon he had in his hands, and started walking over to him. “are you alright, buddy? you look unbelievably exhausted. how much rest have you gotten?”

Meouch put his gaming controller down, got up from the couch, and approached Sung.

“Not much, to be quite honest.” Sung responded nonchalantly, staring off at nothing in a dazed state. “But it’ll all be worth it once I fix a few small things. Now, let me just, uh,” Sung weakly gestured for Phobos and Meouch to move out of his way. When they did so, Sung let his body fall forward onto the couch, and he landed with a bounce on the soft cushions. Within seconds, loud snores could be heard erupting from him.

Meouch and Phobos gave each other a concerned look. A part of Meouch hated that he could never stay mad at Sung during times like this.

“We should carry him up to his room. That way he can at least sleep a little better in his own bed.”

“yeah. he must be VERY tired if he fell asleep on the couch that quickly. he doesn’t even like sleeping on this couch.”

“Right? Plus, I was, like, ya know, kinda sitting there.” Meouch vaguely motioned towards the couch that Sung was now occupying. “And I wanna keep playing ‘The Secrets of The Dark Matter.’”

“You truly are something else.”

Meouch simply shrugged and chuckled. “I got his feet. You got his shoulders?”

Phobos nodded.

The two then picked him up, carried him all the way upstairs to his room, and gently laid him in his bed. Phobos made sure to put some covers over him before the two went back downstairs.

 

The next time they saw him was later that night after he’d woken up from his eleven hour nap. When Sung, who was now in his pajamas, came downstairs, the scent of ramen noodles wafted into his nostrils, and he was instantly filled with glee. He hurried down the stairs and into the kitchen, where he saw Meouch and Phobos cooking up something delicious. Phobos was dicing up some celery, while Meouch was stirring the noodles in a boiling pot. Other delectable ingredients were splayed out on the countertops, such as sliced chicken and green onions.

Meouch looked up at Sung when he walked in. “Oh, hey, Sung. We were just about to wake you up in a few minutes.”

Phobos typed into his phone, and it said, “we decided to make you some ramen.”

Sung beamed, yawning and covering his mouth. “Aww, you guys are too sweet.”

“meouch actually suggested the idea, so you have him to thank.”

“Thanks, buddy.” Sung went over and patted Meouch on the shoulder.

 _Yeah, yeah, don’t let this fool you, conehead, I’m still pissed at you._ Meouch thought to himself. _I was only being nice._

Why did he feel such conflicting emotions? Why does he still have some resentment towards Sung, yet also have some sympathy for him? He hated having so many confusing thoughts. It drove him insane. He didn’t know whether he wanted to hug him or shake him violently and scream at him.

“No problem,” Meouch muttered out. “We’ll let you know when everything’s ready, which shouldn’t be too long from now.”

“Okay! Also, thanks for putting me in my bed, guys. I really appreciate it.” Sung said with a genuine smile. “I’ll be on the couch.” Then, he went into the living room, plopped down onto the couch, and began watching whatever was on the TV.

Meouch expected Sung to start talking any moment now, probably about the progress of the robot’s reprogramming, or maybe he’d try to start up a conversation to catch up with everything he’d missed these past few weeks, but he was surprisingly quiet for the next few minutes. The only peep from Sung was a light laugh or a snicker every now and then.

You’d figure that a guy who spent about three weeks in almost complete isolation to work on a robot drummer would have a lot to talk about.

Meouch continued to cook the ramen for a few more minutes while Phobos soft boiled some eggs to top it all off. After everything was done and prepared, the two took just a little longer to assemble three delectable bowls of ramen, steaming hot and ready for consumption. The bowls were then placed on the dining room table, along with napkins and forks.

“Ramen’s ready, Sung.” Meouch called out as he walked over to his seat at the table.

Just as Phobos and Meouch sat down at the table, Sung made his way over and marveled at the yummy-looking bowls of ramen. “Wow, you guys have really outdone yourselves!” He pulled out his chair, sat down, and picked up his fork. “I _really_ appreciate this. Thanks.”

Phobos gave a thumbs up in response.

Meouch said nothing.

Sung immediately dug into his ramen, slurping down the noodles and vegetables in moderate portions. Phobos lifted his helmet up so that his mouth was exposed, and began to eat his ramen as well. Meouch waited a few seconds, then started eating.

It was dead silent for a few solid minutes while everyone ate, other than the sound of clinking utensils and quiet slurps. The awkwardness in the room was damn near palpable. Phobos was the one who broke the silence.

“so, would you mind telling us the progress you’ve made with our drummer?” Phobos’ phone asked aloud, causing Sung and Meouch to look up from their bowls.

Sung finished slurping up a few noodles, then wiped his face and responded, “Well, it should be an amazing drumming machine, now!” He smiled. “I’ve reprogrammed its main systems with all types of drumming techniques and expertise. The only problem is that I haven’t seen it execute any drumming while in its waking state. Whenever it’s awoken, it immediately tries to attack me, so I have to shut it down. I don’t know why it does that.” Sung took another forkful of ramen and ate it. He waited until he was done, then continued. “I haven’t been able to find the coding or programming in it that causes those violent tendencies.”

“Well, I mean, I’d probably attack you, too, if you randomly kidnapped me while I was sleeping one night and then experimented on me all day for three weeks straight,” Meouch loudly muttered as he twirled noodles onto his fork.

“It’s a _robot_ , Meouch.” Sung said, in a correcting tone. “I know you’re not the brightest tool in the box, but even you have to know th-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Meouch sharply interjected. “Robots don’t have natural emotions. I was joking. God, relax.”

Even though Meouch was looking down at his bowl, he could feel Sung’s glare on him.

“Anyway,” Sung turned back to Phobos. “I don’t know what’s causing it to be so violent. I mean, obviously it’s been wired and programmed to be violent by whoever created it, but I haven’t actually found _where_ it stems from, ya know?

While Phobos munched on some of the sliced chicken in his ramen, he typed into his phone,

“that’s odd. perhaps it’s creator purposely made it difficult to reprogram. i theorize that it must’ve been created and/or used as a weapon of destruction of some sort.”

“That’s a good theory. I thought about that before, but never really considered it. Either way, I’m sure that I can change it for the better. It’ll be a tremendous transformation, from murder machine to drumming machine!” Sung excitedly waved his hands in the air. “Haha! I’m taking a break, though. I’ll go back to trying to fix up those final touches in a few days.”

“I’m glad you finally took some time off.” Meouch admitted and looked up at Sung whilst crunching on diced celery. “You didn’t look too good once we finally saw you after all that time. I can only imagine the toll all of that work was taking on your body.”

“Well, actually, that wasn’t the reason I took a break.”

“Oh?” Meouch raised an eyebrow.

“See,” Sung began, “Danny invited me to go to a birthday party a few days ago. There was some sort of mix up with ticket distribution or something, so him and Ninja Brian ended up getting three tickets instead of two.”

“so they invited you to take the third ticket?”

“Yup!” Sung shoved a soft-boiled egg into his mouth, and swallowed it. “The party is in two days. I didn’t want to keep working myself to death and then not be able to enjoy the party. Parties are _not_ fun when you’re sleep-deprived and exhausted.” He chuckled a bit.

Meouch’s countenance suddenly furrowed. He shifted his gaze back down to his ramen and began to play around with his food.

“i can only imagine, especially when it comes to the wild parties that those two usually attend. try not to make a repeat of last time please.”

“That wasn’t me! I had nothing to do with that!” Sung panickedly explained. “ _Those_ thugs were the ones who started a fight with some rival gang, not me! And, like, they started attacking Danny and Brian, so I had to help out!!”

Phobos quiety chuckled to himself, while Meouch continued to glare down at his bowl as he slurped up some noodles.

“no, i remember, hehe. that was a wild night. it was actually pretty fun, the five of us fighting off gangs. that sexbang and ninja duo can be a lot to handle- and lots of trouble, most of the time. please be careful, since we won’t be there to help out.”

“I definitely plan to. These next few days are supposed to be relaxing and fun. Gonna take some time off to recover fully, then enjoy a nice day out with Danny and Brian, and get back to work afterwards!”

“well, we hope everything goes according to plan, and that you have fun, sung!”

“Speak for yourself, Phobos.”

Phobos and Sung looked over at Meouch, who continued to eat his food as if nothing was wrong. There was a short silence.

“what do you mean?”

“I mean that I don’t really care how your next few days go. I’m not hoping that your time off goes terribly, but I’m not really hoping that it goes great, either.”

“Meouch, what the hell?” Sung asked. “What’s your deal? One minute you’re being nice to me, and the next, you’ve got a hissy fit!” He put his fork down in his bowl with a _clank_!

“Well, why should I be considerate to you when you aren’t considerate to us?” Meouch asked in a combative tone, his voice a bit louder now.

Sung went to respond, but stumbled on his own words in complete dismay as he threw his hands around in confusion. “ _I’m_ not considerate? I just spent three weeks working on a f-- freaking robot to reprogram it into a drummer for TWRP! And that’s inconsiderate?!”

“First of all, no one told you to go out, get a fuckin’ robot from a cave, bring it home- _where it then attacked us_ , may I add-,” Meouch emphasized in his retort, “and then try to turn it into a drummer, _especially_ when you only went out to get batteries and milk, which you never even got. Secondly? How dare you not even think about us while you went off and worked on that thing for _three weeks_ with barely any contact with us!? Even a damn warning beforehand would’ve made it a little less shitty! But no, _you_ decide to just seclude yourself from your bandmates, your _friends_ , without a word!! You just abandoned us, you just, you just-” Meouch threw his hands onto his mane in frustration, then yelled out, “you just **_left!!_ ** ” He then threw his arms out.

Sung’s lips were curled into a deep frown. “You think I left for fun? Like I just went off and took a sunny vacation to the damn Sunflower Galaxy? I was working! To help us all out!”

“Thirdly-” Meouch began, to which Sung tried to interject numerous times. “Thirdly- _thirdly_ , the reason you came back wasn’t even because you missed us! You only took a break so you could go fucking party with Danny and Brian!! You didn’t even care about us enough to come back and be with us again! It took _Danny_ to invite you somewhere for you to come crawling out of your work-hole!”

“Let’s not forget the reason why we’re _in_ this predicament!” Sung lightly slammed his pointer finger on the table and leaned towards Meouch, his face scowled. “If you weren’t such a lazy slob, and if you actually helped us find a drummer, then I wouldn’t have to go out and make one!”

“I’m a lazy slob?!” Meouch snapped back, pointing to himself and standing up from his seat.

“guys. let’s calm down please?”

“No!, no!, _I’m_ a lazy slob, Sung!?”

Sung placed both of his hands on the table and lifted himself up off of his seat a bit so he could be closer to Meouch. “YES, you are, Meouch.”

“Coming from the guy who spent two fucking months locked up in his room after his computer wife left him?!”

Sung’s eyes shot wide open. His face gradually began to redden. “How DARE you bring her into this!!” He snapped, practically screaming as he banged his fist on the table and rose out of his seat a bit further. “Firstly, it was a month and a half! And you know that was a rough time for me!!” Sung repeatedly patted his hands on the table as he ranted. “I was very emotionally vulnerable!!”

“ENOUGH TO NOT DO ANYTHING FOR TWO MONTHS?”

“YES.”

_“AND THAT MAKES IT OKAY!?”_

_“ Y E S . ”_ Sung quickly rose from his chair and slammed his hands loudly on the table. Now the two were just inches from each other’s faces. “YOU WANNA TAKE CHEAP SHOTS, MEOUCH?” Sung pointed a finger at him. “ALRIGHT, LET’S GET DIRTY. LET’S GET _FUCKING._ **_DIRTY_ ** _.”_

“ʰᵉʸ ᵍᵘʸˢ ᶜᵃⁿ ʷᵉ ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ ʳᵉˡᵃˣ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵉⁿʲᵒʸ ᵗʰᶦˢ ˡᵒᵛᵉˡʸ ᵐᵉᵃˡ ᵃⁿᵈ ˢᵖᵉⁿᵈ ʰᵃᵖᵖʸ ᵗᶦᵐᵉˢ ᵗᵒᵍᵉᵗʰᵉʳ ᵖˡᵉᵃ ˢᵉ,” Phobos’ phone squeaked out.

“NO, LET’S GO, SUNG. WHAT DIRT COULD YOU POSSIBLY HAVE ON ME, HUH?” Meouch leaned in towards him.

“LET’S TALK ABOUT YOU. YOU’VE BEEN ON SUUUUCH A _FUCKING_ HIGH HORSE,” Sung yelled out, his hands raised in the air as he frantically spun around in a circle. “WITH YOUR, ‘OH! I USED TO BE A COMMANDER!! OHHH, I USED TO BE A COMMANDER!!’” He mocked Meouch in a scathing tone. “‘OH, LOOK AT ME! MY FATHER WAS A GENERAL SO I GOT EVERYTHING FUCKING SPOON FED TO ME, AND I- I GOT MY POSITION AS COMMANDER WITHOUT ANY WORK AT ALL!”

“SUNG--”

“‘LOOK AT ME, I’M MEOUCH! NEVER HAD TO WORK FOR A DAMNED THING IN MY ENTIRE FUCKING LIFE, BUT PEOPLE LOOKED UP TO ME AND RESPECTED ME ANY-GODDAMNED-WAY!’”

“YOU SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH!” Meouch screamed in a warning tone, pushing his pointer finger in Sung’s face.

 _“OR WHAT!?”_ Sung hissed back, slapping Meouch’s finger out of his face and leaning in closer. “WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO, HUH? _COMMAND YOUR ARMY_ TO ATTACK ME?”

Meouch’s eyes narrowed, and a grave expression fell over his face. He could feel his muscles tensing up. _“Sung, don’t you fucking da--”_

“OH, THAT’S RIGHT. I FORGOT,--”

“ _SUNG!!”_ Meouch leaned in threateningly.

“--YOU’RE NOT A COMMANDER ANY-FUCKING-MORE, ARE YOU?” Sung shouted harshly in Meouch’s face, his eyes laced with venom.

A tense silence fell over the two for a split second. Meouch balled his hands into tight fists as he gritted through clenched teeth, _“You. take. that. BACK.”_

“OR!, SINCE YOU DON’T HAVE AN ARMY TO COMMAND ANYMORE, MAYBE YOU CAN CALL YOUR _FATHER_ INSTEAD.”

Something in Meouch’s demeanor shifted immediately. A sudden feeling of heavy dread fell over him, and over the entire kitchen. Even Phobos’ shoulders sunk at this. Meouch fell quiet, but Phobos’ phone whispered out, “sung.”

“OR BETTER YET- GET YOUR _FAMILY_ TO HELP YOU OUT.” Sung just glared, daring for Meouch to do or say anything. “OH, _WAIT, I_ _FORGOT_ _.”_

The echo from Sung’s words lingered heavily in the air. That was **_low,_ ** especially for Sung. Meouch felt a tight knot twist up in his stomach, felt the anger exploding in his chest and rising up quicker by the second, felt the pricks of a thousand knives being thrust into his back. By now, he was literally shaking. His hands were balled into such tight fists that he could feel his claws digging into his palm. It was taking every ounce of him to not pounce on Sung. Words couldn’t even escape his throat at this point, and he felt his jaw would break from how hard he was gritting his teeth.

Sung slammed his finger into Meouch’s chest. “WHO FUCKING TOOK YOU IN WHEN YOUR OWN PLANET EXILED YOU? WHO OFFERED YOU A JOB IN THIS BAND WHEN YOU HAD NOWHERE ELSE TO FUCKING GO, HUH? **ME.** ” He jabbed his finger into Meouch’s chest again, his face red as a tomato. “WHEN YOU WERE SHIT OUTTA LUCK, WHO GAVE YOU A HOME? CERTAINLY NOT YOUR FAMILY. **I** DID. AND THIS IS HOW YOU FUCKING REPAY ME? BY LOUNGING AROUND AND NOT EVEN BOTHERING TO HELP OUT THE PERSON WHO GAVE YOU A CHANCE? BY BEING A FUCKING BURDEN TO THIS HOME?”

More silent, seething glares from Meouch. Every sentence just felt like another dagger being shoved into his back and twisted into the flesh.

“WHAT’S WRONG, MEOUCH? CAT GOT YOUR TONGUE? NO SNAPPY REMARKS THIS TIME? WHERE’S YOUR FUCKIN’ SASS NOW, HUH?! CAN’T THINK OF ANYTHING TO SNAP BACK WITH BECAUSE EVERYTHING I’M SAYING IS THE FUCKING TRUTH?”

Dead silence.

“THAT’S. WHAT I THOUGHT. NOW, JUST AS EASY AS IT WAS FOR ME TO ACCEPT YOU INTO THIS BAND, IT’LL BE JUST AS EASY FOR ME TO KICK YOU THE _FUCK_ OUT OF IT.” Sung swung his arm out and pointed at the door.

Even though Meouch’s anger was practically spilling over, his eyes sunk a bit at this. He hated to show any sign of weakness, knowing that Sung would just use it to his own advantage, but it was too late. He couldn’t help the fear of that scenario now hanging over his heart.

“UH-HUH, YEAH. YOU WANNA BE BACK OUT FLOATING IN THE OPEN UNIVERSE AGAIN, TRYING TO FIND A HOME? GALAXIES AREN’T KIND TO FOREIGNERS, MEOUCH. YOU WOULDN’T GET VERY FAR. IF YOU WANNA KEEP UP THIS WHOLE “I’M TOO GOOD TO WORK” BULLSHIT, THEN YOU CAN GET THE FUCK OUT AND FIND A NEW HOME, NEW BANDMATES, AND NEW FRIENDS. SEE IF I GIVE A SHIT.”

For just a split second, as Sung glared daggers at him, Meouch could see a quick glimmer of regret and remorse in Sung’s eyes, but it was quickly replaced with the anger and rage boiling within him. The only thing Meouch could grit through his teeth after a long silence was a slow, shaky “fuck you.”

Sung’s lips curled into a deep frown. “You are on _very thin_ ice, Meouch. Get your act together.” And with that, Sung moved away from his face, pushed his chair out, and walked out of the dining room.

Phobos could see Meouch’s hands shaking as he dug his claws into the wooden table. Meouch looked down and shut his eyes.

“meouch... i’m so sorry that he’d say any of that to you. you know he didn’t mean it. i’m sure he’s just cranky from all of the work he’s been doing, you and i both know he couldn’t have meant that.”

Meouch didn’t even have the strength to say anything in response. He just kept digging his claws deeper into the table no matter how much it hurt him.

“meouch?“

In a swift move, Meouch slapped his bowl of ramen off of the table, and it crashed into the wall, then shattered as it hit the ground, sending ramen noodles and chicken broth flying everywhere. He then brought his hands up to his face and ran his hands through his mane. He clutched onto his head and squeezed his eyes shut to keep any tears from falling. The only thing he could do was just scream at the top of his lungs in utter distraught, and storm out of the kitchen.

Phobos was now the only one at the table. His ramen had been untouched for the last few minutes, and he didn’t plan on taking another forkful of it after what had just transpired.

“:(”


	3. The Nightmare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meouch has a stressful night after the big argument, which results in him having an emotional nightmare dealing with his past. After waking up from said nightmare the next morning, he decides that he needs to plan out how to get back at Sung- but his plan is very risky, and very dangerous.

None of them had a good sleep that night.

Which was almost funny, in a way, because Meouch was expecting to finally have a good night’s rest now that Sung was done working. Yet here he was once again, staring at the wall in the middle of the night, waiting for the time he’d be able to fall asleep. But it was different this time. The noise wasn’t coming from the outside anymore; there were no power drills or hammers echoing through the house into Meouch’s room keeping him awake. Now it was from the inside. Too many thoughts, words, and emotions were swarming and bouncing about harshly in his mind, and it seemed to only get worse whenever he shut his eyes. Sung’s words were repeating over and over and over and  _ over _ again, stinging worse each time they rung in his head. Meouch’s own anger and hatred only fueled the fire. He was fucking pissed at Sung, but his anger ran past Sung alone. Meouch couldn’t figure it out, but he somehow felt like his anger wasn’t  _ only  _ directed at him. It almost felt like there was too much anger to control, and because it couldn’t all go towards Sung, it just swarmed around aimlessly in his body with no outlet. His mind, heart, and body were all just burning with aggression and rage, with nothing to ease it.

That night, he actually longed for the sleepless nights from the previous three weeks. Anything was better than this.

A few more agonizing hours had passed before he was able to drift off to sleep, but his torment didn’t stop there.

Suddenly, in the darkness of his slumber, there was a loud booming voice.

**_“COMMANDER MEOUCH!”_ **

Meouch snapped his eyes open with a start, and was met with the sight of the floor beneath him. He was on his knees, and his head was drooping down. He went to move his hands, but he felt the cold metal of handcuffs binding his wrists together behind his back. Panic immediately shot through him. 

He recognized this nightmare.

The sting of thousands of pair of eyes became present and harsh on his skin. He breathed out a shaky sigh, and reluctantly lifted his head up to face everyone. 

Surrounding him were hundreds of thousands of spectators standing in the rows of grandstands. A few yards in front of him were figures in long robes, their faces hidden by the shadow of their hoods, and behind them on towering platforms was a line of the planetary officials and chiefs of his planet. Their faces were stern, and their manes were long and grey with age, but well kempt. All of their glares were piercing through his soul, but Meouch’s eyes lingered on the glare from one of them in particular: the Commander of Extraterrestrial Defense- his own father.

His glare in particular was fueled with more than just anger. He tried to put on a strong unbiased face, but Meouch knew his father too well; he could see the disappointment and apprehension laced in his father’s faded blue eyes. And that’s what made his glare sting the most.

Meouch just wanted to call out to him, say that he was sorry, explain himself and his actions better. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could utter anything, the same booming voice from before roared over the loudspeakers of the palace.

**_“TRAITOR.”_ **

Meouch shut his mouth, and tried to gulp through the lump in his throat. When he tried to speak again, a voice from the crowd yelled the same harsh word: “TRAITOR!”

More spectators followed suit, and began to scream out.

“Traitor!!!”

“Exile him!”

“Execution!!”

“TRAITOR!!!”

Before long, there was an uproar from the crowd. The palace was filled with screaming angry voices now. Spectators were on their feet, furiously waving their fists about whilst booing and chanting hate-filled comments. Meouch’s ears were filled with the overwhelmingly thundering cries and chants of spectators, nearly all screaming his new alias: “Traitor.” 

Among all of the deafening chaos, Meouch tried to call out to his father, but his voice was buried beneath all of the noise. All his father did was to just continue scowl at him.

Meouch’s surroundings began to change, though. The sky gradually grew dark until it was jet black, and the blackness from the sky dripped down into the spectator stands, consuming the crowd and it’s chants until the entire grandstand had disappeared into darkness and silence.

The only people left were the judges, the planetary officials, and the chiefs in front of him. Meouch’s father stepped down from the platform. The judges in front of him moved out of his way as he slowly approached his son. Meouch watched in silence, listening to his loud footsteps on the ground.

His father stopped just a few feet in front of him, and glared down at him in a sickening silence. His face was twisted with disgust, and his huge mane cast a dark shadow over his face.

Meouch trembled in his father’s presence. He gulped again, and spoke in a quiet, shaking voice. “Dad, I… I’m sorry. I just- I, I...” He kept choking up and stuttering on his words. There were so many things he wanted to say, so many reasons and explanations, but nothing was coming out right. He hated this so fucking much. He hated the tears filling his eyes, he hated this feeling of being pathetic and weak, of being helpless, of asking for forgiveness like such a pitiful criminal. All he could cry out in spastic, broken pleas was, “I’m  _ sorry _ ! Dad, please, you- you have to believe me! God, you have to! You know I-... I wouldn’--  _ fuck!!”  _ Meouch let his head droop down as he erupted into quiet whimpers. “Dad, please. Don’t let them do this to me… You believe me, right? You  _ know  _ I’m not what they say I am, right?” Meouch bought his head up to look into his father’s cold eyes. His expression had changed none, while Meouch, on the other hand, now had a red, puffy, tear-stained face.

Meouch whimpered quietly, waiting in agony for a response.

“Dad?”

After a long silence, his father uttered one word in a low, menacing tone.

“  **T r a i t o r . ”**

The word shot right through Meouch’s heart, shattering it and letting the remnants fall into his stomach. His face and shoulders sunk at this, his chest heaving up and down between spastic breaths. Meouch flinched when he felt rough hands suddenly grab onto his arms. The hands pulled him backwards, dragging him away from his father. In a panic, he began kicking and attempting to pull himself away from their grips, screaming out “No!!” in increasingly louder dismayed cries. No matter how much he struggled, he couldn’t stop himself from being pulled away from the one person who he thought he could trust.

The grips on his arm only grew stronger and stronger the farther he got from him. No matter how painful it was to keep struggling, he continued to kick and scream his lungs out- until there was an abrupt and sharp pain that burned into his arm. He screamed and squeezed his eyes shut as he thrashed about.

Suddenly, the hands clutching onto him let go, and when he opened his eyes, he found himself staring at the familiar ceiling of his bedroom. He flinched and sat straight up when he saw movement in the corner of his eyes, but relaxed when he turned and saw Phobos standing beside his bed. He had a mug of coffee in one hand, and a plate of food in the other. Phobos froze for a split second once he saw Meouch wake up, then cautiously lowered the food down onto the table next to Meouch’s bed. Once he placed everything down, he pulled his phone out, and typed into it.

“sorry. i tripped on some wires when i was approaching your bed, and as i was catching my balance, some coffee spilled over and fell on you. my mistake, i’m sorry.”

Meouch breathed out a sigh, and wiped his eyes. His heart was still beating out of his chest, and he wondered if Phobos could tell that he was having a nightmare. Hopefully not.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” he assured. “Thank you, man.” He glanced over at his plate filled with bacon, eggs, grits, and french toast, then lightly chuckled. 

“i know you probably had a rough night, so i just wanted to make sure that you at least woke up in a good mood. but i already messed up, lol.”

“Nah, you’re fine. I appreciate it.”

Meouch rubbed the part of his arm that’d been burned by the coffee, and smiled at Phobos. Somehow, even without knowing it, Phobos had helped him out yet again. Times like this, he really appreciated him. He would’ve thanked him for (accidentally) waking him up from his nightmare, but that would require him telling Phobos about the nightmare itself, and Meouch didn’t want him to know about it; he refused to admit that Sung’s words had such a negative effect on him. So, instead, he just thanked him for the breakfast in bed. “Thanks, man.”

Phobos gave a nod and a hearty thumbs up in response. 

“Heh, did you make food for Sung, too?” Meouch asked in a playful tone. Phobos began typing a response, but Meouch interrupted with, “No, I was joking, just kidding.” Frankly, he was somewhat wary of what his answer would be.

As Meouch grabbed his mug and took a few sips of coffee, Phobos began walking out of the room. “today’s going to be be very awkward and quiet, isn’t it?”

“Yup. Heh, hell, it’ll be like this for next few days, at the very least. That’ll be fun for you, eh? Haha.”

“it always is.”

Phobos exited and closed the door shut behind him.

Meouch always felt bad for Phobos whenever arguments broke out between him and Sung. He was always stuck in the middle of his two best friends, and had to endure the agonizing silence between them for a few hours, maybe for the rest of the day, until they apologized to each other. None of their arguments  **ever** reached this caliber of intensity, though. This would linger on for much longer than usual.

Just the mere thought of their argument from the night before got Meouch all fired up again. He frowned, and put his mug down with a little too much force. Sung would pay for this,  _ all  _ of this: the argument, the three weeks of silence, and  _ especially  _ for bringing that damn robot home- and no, he still isn’t over that. How Sung’s gonna pay for it all, he wasn’t sure of just yet. But he’d think of something. Sung won’t get away with what he said. He’ll pay dearly for that shit, Meouch vowed to himself. Fuck him.

While Meouch ate his delicious food, he tried his hardest to think of a plan, something that he could do to fuck with Sung and not get caught. Quite honestly, his mind was still screwed up from the nightmare, so he couldn’t really think straight. Damn you, Sung. 

_ What’s something that he cares about? _

That was the main basis for his revenge plan. He needed to mess up something important to Sung.

_ Hmmm. _

Meouch pondered over many things that he could do as he munched down, but all of his ideas were either too intricate to pull off, too harsh, or too relenting.

But something suddenly popped into his head- something devious, something that would fuck with Sung on so many levels, something that would screw him over so satisfyingly bad, but also something that wouldn’t lead directly back to Meouch.

Oooohhh, yes. He likes this idea.

Meouch couldn’t help the dubious grin that formed on his face at the thought of this. This is gonna be so sweet.

That day was, as predicted, quiet and awkward as all hell, just like it usually is after an argument. But today was slightly different.

Obviously things were terrible. Sung didn’t speak or interact with Meouch, and Meouch did the same with Sung. Hell, most of the time, they’d just glare at each other if they came within close distance. Other than that, they kept to their own personal space. Meanwhile, Phobos was just sort of stuck either speaking briefly to only one of them at a time, or not speaking at all.

But Phobos  _ did  _ notice something off about Meouch. He’d sometimes catch Meouch very deep in thought, often so deep in thought that he would just stare at nothing for a few minutes at a time. 

“are you alright?” Phobos would occasionally ask, to which Meouch would snap out of his deep plotting and quickly respond with something along the lines of,

“Yeah, I’m, uh, I’m cool.”

Then Meouch would continue going about his business, still seeming a bit too deep into his own mind.

By the end of the day, Meouch had everything planned out- every detail, every miniscule aspect.

And for the first time in weeks, he had a wonderful night’s rest. In fact, he even had a tiny grin on his face as he slept. One would’ve thought he was dreaming.

 

\---

 

The next day, when Meouch woke up, he could faintly hear Sung’s voice coming from the living room downstairs. He must’ve been on the phone with someone, probably Danny.

“Yeah, yeah… Again? Didn’t you guys fight them again a few weeks back?... So, wait, Brian  _ didn’t  _ kill him?... That’s the one with the yellow streak in his hair, right? No? OH, right, right… Damn, already? It’s only been a few days!... C’mon, man, not with her sister... Dude, you seriously need learn about a thing called commitment...”

Yeah, he’s definitely talking to Danny.

Meouch climbed out of bed and made his way over to the bathroom. As he brushed his teeth, he continued to listen in on their conversation.

“I mean, I’d be mad, too, if you slept with my sister… Hahaha! Oh, my god, that’s fucked up… So is she going with you to the party today?”

Meouch perked up when he heard Sung mention the party. He made sure to pay extra attention, now.

“Ah, okay, nice… Oh, really?... Yeah! Of course I remember! Those were the days... Yeah, that’d be great! We can do that, yeah… Right? We haven’t gone there in ages… And we’ll just leave from there, and head straight to the party when it’s time, right?... Okay, sounds like a plan! I’ll start getting ready soon, then...”

_ Perfect _ .

This gives Meouch much more time to act out his plan than he’d previously anticipated. Nice. As Meouch rinsed out his mouth over the sink, he listened just a bit more, just in case they mentioned anything else.

“Oh, hi, Brian.”

Meouch then heard a loud scream come through Danny’s end of the call.

“Oh God! Are you o--... You sure? That sounded painful… Oh, right, immortality thing, I always kinda forget… Yeah, you go and, uh, clean up. Call me back when you’r--... You’re sure?... Haha! You two are unbelievable. Well, alright, then...”

Their conversation continued on, surprisingly, but they moved past the topic of the party, so Meouch didn’t pay too much attention to it after that. 

He exited the bathroom, and headed downstairs to make himself breakfast. He found Phobos sitting on the couch, a video game controller in his hands as he watched a cutscene on the TV. An empty bowl with a spoon in it sat on the floor in front of the couch.

“‘Sup.” Meouch nodded to Phobos as he passed by him and headed into the kitchen.

“not much. just finished the third chapter.”

“Already? Damn, how long have you been playing?”

“not long. that chapter was just surprisingly short, is all.”

“Ohh.” Meouch poured himself a bowl of cereal, and watched the intense plot unfold on the TV screen. He then made his way over to the couch, and plopped down into the spot next to Phobos. He began munching on his cereal as they continued to watch the scene.

Once the scene ended, Meouch watched Phobos start the gameplay of the next chapter while he ate his bowl of cereal. A couple of minutes went by, and eventually, the sound of Sung’s voice couldn’t be heard anymore, as it had been replaced with the sound of rushing water in the shower. He’s getting ready now. Good.

Meouch smirked just a tiny bit.

Thankfully for Meouch, Sung never takes long to get ready. Sung has about nine yellow spacesuits always ready in his closet, so most of the time, all he has to do is just throw one of them on once he gets out of the shower and brushes his teeth and all that. He was pretty much ready to go just about twenty minutes later.

As he made his way down the stairs, he said aloud,

“Alright, I’m about to leave.”

Meouch was elated on the inside, but kept an impassive expression. He took out his phone to pass the time, knowing that Sung and Phobos would probably talk for a bit before he left.

Phobos paused the game so he could type into his phone. “already?”

“Yeah. Well, I’m not leaving for the party right now.” Sung sat on the bottom step and tied his shoes. “Danny wanted to meet up on Earth for a few hours before we go.”

“i thought he was banned from earth?”

“What? No!, no- he’s banned from Earth ‘3, ‘4, ‘17, and…” Sung paused for a quick moment to remember correctly. “Oh! And ‘69. Don’t know how I coulda forgotten that one. Oh- and he’s banned from a few other planets and galaxies. And from a Five Guys on Earth’s New Jersey.”

“goddamn.”

“Yeah. He’s a mess.” Sung finished lacing up his white sneakers, then stood up with an exhale. “He wanted to hang out on Earth, just like old times. So me, him, and Brian are gonna stop by for a while.”

“ah, alright. well be careful, please.”

“I will.” Sung made his way over to the door. “I’ll be back, uhhh, probably late as hell, knowing those two. Love you guys.”

“love you too, sung.”

“Love ya, Sung.” Meouch muttered out, only glancing away from his phone to look at Sung for a split second.  

And with that, Sung opened the door, walked out, and shut the door closed behind him.

Bingo.

Meouch waited until he heard Sung’s jet start up and fly off of the landing deck. Once Sung had left for sure, Meouch turned to Phobos and asked,

“Hey, Phobos. You’ve got my back no matter what, right?”

Phobos looked at him for a few seconds, seeming to be thinking of a proper response.

“yes…? why do you ask?”

“Well, I’m gonna do something that, um… might be a bit risky, and I need to know that you’ll keep it a secret.”

More blank staring from Phobos. Meouch waited anxiously as Phobos typed his reply. He was taking a bit longer than usual to type, for he was backspacing a lot and retyping things.

“what do you plan on doing?”

Meouch just smirked and chuckled lightly.

“oh no.”

Meouch stretched, and stood up from the couch. “Alright, here’s the plan. You know how Sung’s been working in his lab for the past, like, forever?”

Phobos slowly nodded.

“Well, let’s just say that, uhh,” Meouch rolled his eyes with a big smile on his face. “It’ll be a shame when he goes back in is lab, and discovers that his calculations and programming and shit has been tampered with.” Meouch gave a toothy grin.

Phobos stared at Meouch for what felt like an eternity. All he could do was just slowly facepalm.

“So…” Meouch shot him a questioning look. “...you with me, or what?”

It took Phobos a few seconds to bring his hand down and type his response.

“you’re joking. please tell me you’re joking.”

“Nope. I’m 1,000% serious right now.”

“you do realize how dangerous this could potentially be, right?”

Meouch sank down onto the arm of the couch. “How? I mean, I’m not gonna, like, mess with anything that could be, ya’ know,  _ actually  _ dangerous or life-threatening. Just small stuff that’ll send his work back, ya’ know? Like, taking some notes and hiding them in different parts of the lab, or changing the programming or coding or whatever by adding unnecessary brackets here and there, and adding extra numbers to it. That’s how that works, right?” Meouch waited for an answer, but when Phobos just stared at him, he continued on. “Look, I’m not even gonna make any major changes! I’m gonna mess up his work in such a miniscule way, that he’ll think that  _ he _ made the mistakes while working on it. You get what I’m saying?”

“it doesn’t matter what you change, meouch. messing with any of those things could be dangerous- for you, or for sung. the possibilities are endless! and not in a good way!!”

“Don’t worry, man. I’ll be careful, I promise. Seriously.”

“what’s your goal in all of this? what if you get caught?”

“I won’t. Not if you promise to keep it a secret.”

“i mean, i’ll only do this because you’re my close friend. but still, what happens if he has security cameras in there? do you really want to risk being kicked out of TWRP?”

Meouch didn’t have an answer to that. It took him a bit to think of a response. 

“Well, at least if I get kicked out, I’ll go out with a bang by teaching Sung a lesson. You  _ know  _ what he said was fucked up, Phobos, come on!”

“i know he crossed the line, i was there, but that’s not an excuse to do something like this. he was wrong, but he’ll apologize once he sees the error in his words. just be patient, meouch.” Phobos placed a gentle hand on Meouch’s shoulder. “please think this through.”

“I already have. I’ve got everything planned out.”

“that’s not what i meant.”

Meouch hopped off of the arm of the couch and took a moment to think. Phobos was actually bringing up good points that he hadn’t considered before- but he didn’t want that to stop him. He knew that Phobos was only looking out for him, but his pride wouldn’t let him stray from revenge. Sung wouldn’t get away with this. And as much as he knew Phobos was right, he still had to do something to get even.

“Just promise that you won’t say anything. Please, Phobos?” Meouch asked in a sincere tone.

Phobos breathed out a silent sigh, letting his shoulders sink.

“alright. don’t get carried away, meouch. please be careful.”

“I definitely will. If Sung texts and asks where I am, say that I’m practicing some songs.”

“okay.”

Meouch took in a breath, and walked over to the door leading to the hallway. Just as he went to open it up, he heard Phobos’ phone call out, “wait.”

Meouch stopped and turned around.

“how are you going to get through the other door? the door to his lab is electronically locked, you know.”

“Yeah. And Sung unlocks it using voice activation.” Meouch raised his phone in the air. “I’ve got some voicemails from him on my phone.”

“oooh, you clever cat.”

“You know it.” Meouch coyly grinned, turned around, and opened the door, beginning his walk down the long hallway leading to Sung’s laboratory. The door closed itself behind him.


	4. Sweet Revenge Gone Sour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meouch makes his way into Sung's lab, and succeeds in messing around with some of Sung's work, but tampers with things that end up creating a lot of trouble, as one could probably guess.

Meouch looked around at the white walls and white-tiled floors around him. He’d been in this hallway only a few times before, and each time he got this eerie feeling as he went through. Something about the absolute silence, other than his own footsteps, filled him with an odd sense of unease. The immediate transition from their welcoming and comfortable living room to this silent and empty corridor straight out of a science-fiction movie was always baffling to Meouch, especially now.

After what felt like an eternity, Meouch found himself approaching the lab door. There was an input speaker next to the metal door, along with a small control panel underneath the speaker. Once Meouch was directly in front of it, he played one of the voicemails from Sung, and put his phone right against the input speaker of the door.

“ _Hi, Meouch! Just checkin’ to make sure you’re feeling okay. Lemme know if you need more medicine or soup, I’m stopping by the store to get some stuff before we get home. Love you, see ya soon, bye!”_

There was a loud _ding!_ of approval _,_ then came the _click!_ of the door unlocking.

Meouch blew out a breath. Here goes nothing.

He put his phone in his pocket, and grabbed the metal door handle- but paused.

A knot formed in the pit of his stomach, and he could feel anxiety rushing through him, both in the positive way and negative way. Even though he was getting a bad feeling from sneaking in here, he couldn’t help the tiny bit of curiosity and elation that he felt inside.

He turned the handle, and pulled the door open.

The room was fairly dark, at first. Meouch walked inside, and felt around the wall next to the door for a light switch, but felt nothing. As he went to walk over to the other wall, suddenly the lights turned on, startling him nearly out of his skin. They’re probably motion activated, he assumed after taking a second to think straight.

Meouch turned around to look at the place.

This room was _huge._ Somehow, it managed to be spacious even though there so many tables, shelves, and monitors- some small, and others massive in size. Everything in this lab was grey: the walls, the floor, the lab tables and chairs, the shelves, the computer monitors, everything, or so it initially seemed.

Some of the monitors and gadgets in the room began to start up on their own, low buzzing sounds emitting from them. Monitor screens lit up, and the dozens of buttons on control panels glowed colorful hues. A few beeps rang out here and there.

Meouch walked between the tables, gazing at the cool-looking gadgets, hand-written notes, and strange liquids and substances in funny looking bottles. He also passed by some shelves, and took notice of the books, papers, and notes that were neatly organized in them.

There was a huge master computer mounted on the right wall. It illuminated a bright white screen as it started up, catching the eye and attention of Meouch. The screen then changed to a very complicated menu. Meouch walked over to it, and looked at all of the different things on screen that he could click on and possibly tamper with. He looked down at the control panel glowing beneath him, amazed by the amount of various buttons.

“This shit is crazy…” He said to himself. He looked back up at the monitor, and took a moment to think. “I’ll come back for you, computer,” Meouch pointed at it in a threatening matter before continuing to venture further into the lab.

God, there were so many weird and intriguing things in here. Meouch kicked himself for waiting so long to sneak in. This lab is amazing. He had such an urge to touch everything in sight, but knew that wouldn’t be such a great idea. He had to be strategic about this, he shouldn’t just go around and fuck up everything in sight- not without a decent plan, at least.

As he approached the back wall of the room, he found a small, dimly lit corridor that lead to a door. There were a few doors on either side of the hallway, but the one at the very end stood out from the rest. It was made of a strong, heavy metal, and there was a large window next to it, in which you could look inside the room it led to. Meouch walked down the corridor and approached the window to get a better look inside, but it was too dark to see anything. His curiosity getting the best of him, he pushed the door open, and went inside.

Again, he felt around for a light switch, but as soon as he made any kind of movement, the lights flicked on, startling him just a bit. This room was different, though. The lights were a lot dimmer, leaving a lot of dark spaces in the room. It felt like he was in one of those sci-fi horror games that Phobos would sometimes play. Meouch never played them, they were way too damn terrifying for his tastes- but he never told anyone about his fear. His excuse out of playing those scary games would usually be, “Tch, this is so boring. I’d rather be sleeping,” when in all actuality, he was nearly shitting himself behind his facade. Now, he was in a real-life creepy setting, and even though he didn’t like the feeling, he ventured deeper inside.

There were a few work desks pushed up against the walls, leaving a lot of open space in the middle of the room. The further he advanced into the room, the darker his surroundings became. In the back of the room, Meouch could faintly see the silhouette of… _something_ in the dark. He inched closer and closer to it, as if he was approaching a wild animal.

He flinched and yelped when he felt something hit his face, and jumped back. Meouch then realized that it was simply a skinny chain dangling from the ceiling, possibly a light switch. When he tugged on the chain, something clicked, and a lightbulb that hung from the ceiling just in front of him turned on and supplied enough light for Meouch to see. Once he saw what that _something_ was, he immediately froze and nearly jumped right out of his skin.

It was that damned robot.

He took a step back at first, but stopped. It wasn’t moving, and its eyes weren’t glowing red.

It was strapped up to a work table that stood upright against the wall, like a modern age Frankenstein’s monster. It looked pretty much the same since the last time Meouch had seen it, other than some minor things: it had been cleaned up a bit, so that there wasn’t as much rust and decay on its metal exterior now. Its eye sockets were dark and empty, and Meouch didn’t want to stare into them for too long. Between the mental image of those eyes glowing red and chasing after him, and the current state of those eyes being empty and barren, Meouch felt unsettling chills run down his spine.

Honestly, he wasn’t sure if this robot was scarier with or without its glowing eyes.

Either way, he got bad vibes just from being near it. But that wouldn’t stop him from tampering with it a bit, just to piss Sung off.

…

Actually, no, _fuck_ that. He’s not gonna touch that thing. Maybe he’ll find something else in this room to fuck with. Hopefully he can find some tools to screw with, or perhaps a monitor that contains all of its programming or code or whatever. For now, he’ll stick with the small and simple stuff. So, he clicked the light back off, stepped back, and exited the room. He made his way back into the main room of the lab to start his mischievous plan.

Meouch began with the handwritten notes on the tables first. They were all neatly organized in piles, some of them even having sticky notes with titles on top of them, such as “Galileojhen Brain Cell Observations” and “White Bubble Theory Notes.” He went through the piles, and randomly took out pages from them. Then, he’d either mix them all up in different piles, or he’d hide some of the pages in different parts of the room, like in a drawer, or beneath a beaker on a shelf. For some, he’d just stuff them in his pocket to trash later. And for notes containing measurements and calculations, he’d erase certain numbers and rewrite a number that was slightly off to the original in Sung’s handwriting- or something close enough to it, at least. Meouch couldn’t hold in the little devious snickers that escaped him as he worked.

Next, he went for the materials on the shelves. There were tools, containers, machines, mechanism parts, and some other things that Meouch couldn’t even identify. They all looked pretty important, which only heightened Meouch’s curiosity and mischievous intent. He took some of the beakers, test tubes, and other weird looking containers, and poured small amounts of their contents in the disposal sink nearby. Or, he’d pour a few drips from one solution into different one.

Then, there were the power tools and machines. Meouch removed the batteries from them, stuffed them in his pocket, and put the tools back in their original place on the shelves. With other tools, he put them in the sink and submerged them in water for a minute or two. Then, he dried them off and, again, put them back on their space on the shelf. God, this was so satisfying, especially when he could just imagine Sung’s frustration at his non-functioning tools and inaccurate measurements.

As he was going about his devious work, he stumbled across a picture of Sung and his computer wi-- err, uh... _ex_ computer wife, framed on one of the middle shelves. Ugh, what a dope. Meouch really _did_ have the impulse to just throw it on the ground, but decided that that would be too harsh, and too directly insulting.

Anyway, onto the main computer.

Meouch walked over to the large monitor mounted on the wall, and stared at the screen. There was an elaborate interface on the screen, and it looked somewhat like a web of items to click on. Meouch’s eyes glanced all over the menu, trying to decide where to start first. Most of the items were science-y looking 3D models, folders, maps, and diagrams. Then, there were the regular looking apps and extensions, along with some other random things that only had titles and no icon. Meouch ran his finger over the touchpad, and scrolled over to an icon that was titled “Power,” and clicked on it.

It opened to a new screen that had an overhead map of the entire lab, consisting of all of it’s rooms and hallways, as well as the electronics and machines and such in each area. It was a lot bigger than Meouch had actually thought. A system of circuits ran through all of the rooms and hallways, powering all the lights, computers, machines, and other electronics throughout the lab. There were a few rooms and electronics on the diagram that were lit up with power, while most of the other rooms were dulled out and unpowered. Other than the diagram itself, there were a few command buttons on the bottom corners of the screen.

“Jeez,” Meouch said aloud as he stared up at the massive screen. He bought a hand up to his chin, and tilted his head in thought. Should he fuck with this? Probably not, right?... He’ll just poke around and see what he can do. Nothing major.

He pressed on the different arrow keys on the keyboard, and ended up selecting a bunch of rooms and circuits. He didn’t really know what he was doing, but he was sure that if he kept pushing random buttons and selecting random things that something would get messed up. So that’s exactly what he did. Meouch just sporadically pressed the arrow keys, and pressed a bunch of the other keys on the keyboard. The screen was going nuts. A bunch of rooms were being selected and unselected, and it looked like some of the circuits were just disappearing from the screen then reappearing a second later. Hell, the lights in the room he was in started blinking after a while.

Meouch looked up at the malfunctioning lights, and said “Shit, shit,” as he tried to correct what he’d just done. “Okay, I think I pressed... that key?” He pressed it again, but it did nothing. “Umm… this one?” He tried another key. Nothing happened, other than a loud error noise that rang out from the computer. “ _Fuck.”_ Meouch tried a bunch of different keys, and none of them fixed the lights. He didn’t even know what was going on on the monitor screen. A bunch of rooms were selected and highlighted, but some were glowing different colors, and others were half lit. After a few failed attempts, an ERROR message would pop up on the screen whenever Meouch tried to do anything else. He was starting to hear things in other rooms powering on, while others he could hear clicking off and shutting down abruptly.

_Shit shit shit shit shit!_

Meouch searched around on the screen in a panic. Maybe there’s a mass-undo button? Or a default settings button? Hopefully? His mind was racing to find a solution. His wide eyes fell on a button that read “REFRESH ALL,” along with other buttons nearby that read “RESET,” “FACTORY RESET,” “RESTART,” and “REBOOT.”  

Meouch threw his hands in the air in utter bewilderment. “What’s the fucking difference!? Shouldn’t they all do the same thing?!?”

He took in some deep breaths, and slid his hands down his face. “Just gotta think, just relax, take your time, think, Meouch…”

Just as he was trying to calm himself down, he heard a loud _POP!_ come from another room in the lab, then a loud hissing sound came soon after it. Meouch’s heart nearly exploded on the spot as he flinched a bit.

“O-Okay, okay, nothing, nothing serious, I’m sure. Just foc--”

The distant blare of an alarm cut off Meouch’s words. It must’ve been coming from the room where the hissing noise was.

“SHIT!”

Meouch didn’t even know which button he ended up selecting, he just scrolled over to the area where the multitude of restart buttons were, and randomly clicked on one of them. Meouch impatiently waited for something to happen, but the computer did nothing. It was still on the same screen, the lights were still blinking, and the alarms were still blaring. “COME ON!!” He clicked on the button repeatedly, but still, nothing happened.

Then, suddenly, everything cut off: the computer, the lights, the alarms, the hissing. Darkness fell over the room immediately. Meouch could hear the faint whirr of the computer and other electronics shutting down until there was absolute silence in the pitch black lab. It felt like there was a huge power outage.

Meouch froze in place and gulped. Well, at least the alarms stopped, right? And the lights stopped blinking! Haha, ha…

A few tense moments passed by before Meouch could hear the hum of the computer’s systems starting back up. Soon, he could hear other things starting up, too. In an instant, the lights clicked back on, and so did the computer. The monitor lit up, and displayed a startup screen. The sounds of a bunch of machines and electronics began to whirr in the air, but it became gradually louder, much louder. It seemed as though there were a _lot_ of things turning on all at once, and the lab buzzed with the sound of dozens of mechanisms powering up. Meouch wasn’t sure if things were hunky-dory just yet; hell, he might’ve just created another problem in trying to solve the previous one.

Once the menu screen finally displayed on the monitor, Meouch immediately clicked on the Power icon again to see what the deal was. All of the rooms, electronics, and machines were highlighted and powered on.

“Fuck, _everything_ was turned on?” Meouch breathed out a sigh. “Okay, now… which things were lit up before?” He scanned over the map of the lab, and turned off the power of everything except for the lights, the computers, and whatever else was on before the reset. Things should be back to normal now… for the most part. With an exhale through his nose, Meouch stepped away from the computer and scratched his head.

Okay. Enough with the computer. Now, on to something else. Something less… stress-inducing. After seeing so many other rooms on that map, Meouch figured that there’d be something else for him to do here.

He made his way to the back wall of the lab, and walked down the dark corridor he was in before. He intended to go into one of these side doors, but he stopped when he saw something different in this hallway- the door at the end of the hall was wide open. Meouch’s brow furrowed. Did he leave it open? Maybe it opened when all the power reset? No, that wouldn’t make sense… Maybe he just forgot to close it on his way out. Meouch made his way down the corridor, and when he went to reach for the doorknob, he stopped again. Against his better judgement, he went inside the dark room, just to make sure everything was back to normal.

The lights clicked on once he entered, but it supplied him with very little light. Everything seemed okay, nothing abnormal yet. He walked towards the back of the room. Something was... _different_ , like as if something had changed in this room. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something was simply off. He advanced through the dim room until he approached the back, where the lights gradually dimmed until Meouch was left in near-darkness. He hated the dread and anxiety falling over him. Meouch felt around for the light switch chain, and when his hand brushed it, he grabbed onto it, and tugged. The light clicked on, and Meouch’s heart sank harshly into his stomach.

The robot wasn’t there.

His countenance fell into immediate dismay, his mind and pulse already racing. Meouch threw his hands onto his head in a wide-eyed panic. “Where… the _fuck…_ ”

The only thing that was there was the work table that the drummer was once lying stationary on. The leather straps had been torn and ripped with a lot of force. _Fuck, fuck, fuck!_

Meouch had just indirectly set loose a murderous robot monster. Oh, great.

What worried him more was that he didn’t even know _where_ the damn thing was. Is it in one of the other rooms? Had it escaped while Meouch was messing with the computer? But where would it go? And more importantly: WHERE IS IT NOW?

**_CREEEEAAKKK- CLUNK!_ **

Meouch froze, and he could swear that his heart exploded. That loud noise came from somewhere in this room. Oh, god, no.

_Maybe something fell, hopefully something just fell, don’t freak o--_

 

The sound of more metallic creaks emitted from behind him. Suddenly, a familiar red light shone behind him from the same general area that the noises were coming from, and left a bright red glow on the wall in front of Meouch.

He could feel the red hot fear running through his body. No, please, no.

Meouch slowly, hesitantly turned around to face this thing.

Its two glowing red eyes shone through the darkness from a nearby area of the room, and they stood solitary for a moment. Meouch should’ve taken this moment to run, but he was filled with such a paralyzing horror that all he could do was gaze into the cold eyes of his impending doom. In an instant, the pair of red lights were suddenly dashing towards him in furious movements. The familiar deafening sound of heavy metallic stomping broke Meouch out of his fear-induced dazed state, and he made a mad dash towards the door. He hopped over some of the tables and chairs in his way, and even threw some back at his pursuer, hoping to hinder it and keep it far away from him.

Meouch was able to make it through the door and into the hallway- but the real challenge would be getting his way through the main room of the lab without being caught. The amount of tables, computers, and shelves in his way would definitely not make his escape easy.

After he shot out of the corridor into the main room of the lab, he took no longer than a split second to determine an approximate route that would get him to the door quickest. That thing wasn’t far behind him, and he could hear its footsteps quickly growing closer from the close end of the corridor.

If he can just maneuver his way through the middle of the room without tripping or falling, then he has a chance.

Meouch dashed down the middle of the room, his blood pumping with adrenaline. He jumped and slid over the lab tables, and squeezed through the tight spaces between shelves like he was a gold medalist in the Universal Olympics. The sound of destruction followed close behind him, though; he could hear his pursuer barrelling through the objects and tossing them out of its way with loud crashes and shatters, along with its increasingly approaching footsteps.

Soon enough, Meouch was just a few feet from the door. Nothing was in his way now, no more obstacles. Now it’s the final sprint. He forced himself to dart quickly over to the door, fear running icy hot through his veins. That thing was running just _inches_ behind him, now, the glow of its eyes nearly blinding.

In a swift move, Meouch lunged for the doorknob, and swung it open towards him. He hurriedly ran out of the lab into the hallway, but was abruptly halted when he felt a forceful grip on his shirt holding him back.

He yelped, and tried to pull himself forward, but his strength was no match for the clutch of the drummer. He could feel himself being dragged back into the room. Meouch tugged and struggled with as much might as he could muster, all to no avail. Suddenly, he felt himself being violently picked up by the back of his neck, and held in the air. He kicked his dangling legs as a useless struggle, and grabbed onto the icy cold hand of the robot that gripped his neck. Meouch felt the grip of the robot tighten on his neck just before he was aggressively slammed against the wall of the hallway. The side of his head smacked against the hard white walls, and he instantly felt the pain shoot through his head and through his entire body. He could already feel himself losing consciousness, his vision going blurry and dark, and his body beginning to fall limp and weak. Meouch tried his hardest to struggle, but he already had the wind knocked out of him so bad that he couldn’t do much. He felt the grip on him loosen, and his body slid down the wall onto the ground.

Before he even had a chance to take in a breath, a hand then clutched onto his throat, and lifted him high off the ground. As Meouch’s body rose up, he looked down at the menacing robot, its red eyes gleaming brightly and its hand on Meouch’s throat. The robot then took Meouch’s nearly unmoving body, and slammed it even _harder_ against the wall, again, and again, and again, and _again,_ making sure the last slam was the harshest.

Meouch felt his own warm blood leaking from his head down to his cheek. The last thing he felt was his body being thrown carelessly and harshly onto the white tiled floor before his vision and consciousness blurred into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay in posting. hope you enjoy the next few chapters! <3


	5. It Has a Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meouch wakes up, and tries to find Lord Phobos to make sure he's okay, but the robot ends up finding Meouch first. More chasing ensues, and they eventually are led to a completely new setting.

Meouch awoke to a massive ache in his body, and a throbbing pain in his head. He groaned out, and forced his eyes open. The sight of the white ground left him puzzled.  _ What the hell? _

He grunted out in discomfort as he lifted himself off of the ground, and stood up. Meouch took in his surroundings, putting a hand up against his head to ease his throbbing headache. With squinted eyes, he muttered out, “What... ? Agh, shit, what did I do?” He had a feeling that whatever he’d gotten himself into was somehow his fault- which was right. And even though he couldn’t remember what happened, he felt a sense of urgency pumping within him.

Meouch sunk his face into his palm and tried to spark his memory.

Wait, why does his hand feel… weird?

He took his hand from his face, and looked at it. It was stained crimson with smeared blood. He twisted his face in bewilderment.

Suddenly, the mental image of that robot’s piercing red eyes flashed in his mind, and so did the last moments of Meouch’s recollection: being repeatedly slammed into the wall.

He gasped as his heart stopped.

“SHIT!”

He panickedly looked around through the hallway, just to make sure that he was alone. No one was here other than him- which, again, left Meouch to wonder where the hell that thing went. Realistically, it probably hadn’t gone back into the lab. And if it did, Meouch couldn’t think of a reason as to why it would. But that meant that it must’ve gone into the living room.

Fuck.

That thing is loose in the living area of the house.

Shit, shit, shit,  _ Phobos! _

A tight knot formed in his stomach. Meouch threw his hands onto his head and gritted out, “God, what did I fucking do! Idiot!!”

Without a second thought, Meouch began darting down the hallway towards the door leading to the living room. He swung the door open, and ran into the room. 

Everything looked the same, and nothing seemed particularly off, which relieved him a bit. Hurrying over to the middle of the room, Meouch looked around for his friend.

“PHOBOS!!!” Meouch called out at the top of his lungs. His voice echoed through the house. 

He waited to see if he heard any movement from upstairs or maybe from the kitchen- but there was nothing.

Meouch tried to steady his spastic breaths. So many thoughts were rushing through his head, and his nerves were shooting through the roof. Is Phobos okay? Had he been attacked, too? And if he did, did he survi--

… Okay,  _ okay,  _ let’s NOT go down that train of thought. Meouch was already shaking, his blood boiling with red hot anxiety. He just needs to be calm, cool, collected. He took in a shaky breath, and yelled out again, “PHOBOS!?!”

Meouch  _ did  _ hear something in response, but the noise only made his pulse increase. It was that anxiety-inducing sound of creaking metal, somewhere upstairs. Immediately, heavy footsteps could be heard pounding overhead. Shit. Making his presence known probably wasn’t the best idea.

He’s not leaving until he finds Phobos, or at least knows that he’s somewhere safe. Meouch frantically looked for somewhere to hide. The kitchen has a few good hiding places, right? He ran over into the kitchen, and darted his eyes all around to find a good spot to hide. There was a tall countertop shelf placed in the middle of the kitchen. Pefect. Meouch slid behind the large countertop, and crouched down behind it. He’d done so just in time, for he could hear that thing already stomping down the stairs. 

Crouched down on the floor with his back against the shelf, Meouch listened carefully to the footsteps of the robot. He could even see the red glow of its eyes gleaming through the doorway of the kitchen occasionally. He silently gulped, and breathed as quietly as he possibly could. Is his heart beating really loud, or is it just his own nervousness? Can that thing hear his heart practically beating out of his chest?

Apparently not, thankfully for Meouch. That thing stomped all around the living room, and a few times, it  _ did  _ come close to walking into the kitchen, but would stop just before reaching the door. These were the moments where Meouch would hold his breath and sit absolutely still until the coast was clear; only then would he quietly breathe out a sigh of relief. 

Okay, if that thing could just leave, and go outside, preferably, Meouch could sneak upstairs and look for Phobos. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to give up its search so easily. All Meouch could hear were things being thrown and tossed around in that robot’s ramsack of the downstairs area. While he waited in agonizing anxiousness for it to eventually (and hopefully) give up, Meouch pulled out his phone and anxiously sent a string of texts to Phobos:

 

“PHOBOS ARE YOU OKAY, PLEASE ANSWER ME AND LET ME KNOW YOU’RE OKAY”

“DUDE I FUCKED UP REAL BAD IM SORRY”

“JUST LET ME KNOW YOURE ALRIGHT”

“WHERE ARE YOU”

“IM REALLY SORRY PHOBOS PLEASE BE OKAY”

 

Meouch went to send another text, but his hands were shaking too much to type correctly. He  _ really _ fucked up. Not only had he just released a homicidal robot, but that robot could’ve possibly kil--... harmed his best friend. And here Meouch was yet again, trying to apologize for something that he couldn’t fix, and not being able to form the rights words to convey his emotions. He’s just sitting there, his hands shaking, his chest heavy and and tight. Phobos has to be okay, he needs to be okay.  _ Please. _

The only thing keeping him from having a nervous breakdown was the fact that a goddamn murderous robot was stomping around looking for him. He leaned his head back against the shelf. Meouch shut his eyes and quietly exhaled a shaky breath. 

_ What did I do? You fucking idiot, what did you do!!?  _

It was taking everything in him to not flip the fuck out at that moment.

 

**_Ding! Bzzztt! Bzzzt!_ **

 

Meouch snapped his eyes open with a start. It was a notification from his phone. He looked down at it, and saw a text- a response from Phobos! He didn’t even read it, he just breathed out a silent breath of relief. But his relief was short-lived, as he would soon hear the quickly approaching footsteps of the robot towards the kitchen. 

_ Shit _ , it heard the notification. 

What does he do now? Meouch didn’t have time to read the text, he had to get out of there. Where he would go, he wasn’t really sure yet. Going upstairs would only lead him to dead ends. As much as he hated the possibility of leaving Phobos alone on the ship with that thing, Meouch would have to run outside and try to get in his jet to escape. It was his best bet for now.

Meouch shut his eyes, took in a deep breath, and exhaled. When he opened them back up, he could see the vibrant glow of the robot’s eyes glowing brighter into the doorway as its footsteps inched closer and closer to the kitchen. He was waiting for just the right time to make his move.

When the robot stepped in the room, Meouch heard it stop for a moment. Then he could hear the footsteps resume, now heading towards Meouch’s hiding place behind the countertop shelf. Meouch quietly crawled his way to the other side of the shelf just as the robot inched in on his previous spot. Now, they were on opposite sides of the shelf, except now Meouch was the one closest to the kitchen door. Time to run like hell.

Meouch started off with a speedy crawl, then pushed himself off of the ground into a full sprint, booking it out of the kitchen and towards the front door. Of course, it didn’t take much time for the robot to begin chasing after him.

He quickly made his way to the door, swung it wide open, and made a mad dash outside. Meouch’s jet was sitting in the landing deck of the ship, which was many yards away- but as long as Meouch could keep a decent sized gap between him and that robot, he should be okay.

So Meouch ran. He ran as fast he could push himself to, his lungs and legs burning with exhaustion.

He could hear that thing’s metal feet pounding on the ground behind him, but it didn’t sound very close. His jet was becoming closer and closer with each passing second, and it took everything in Meouch to keep up his speed. Once he finally reached it, Meouch ran over to the driver’s side door, yanked the door open, and hopped inside. He hurriedly pressed the ignition button as he slammed the door shut and locked it. The engines revved up, and the interior lights came on as the jet started up. Meouch looked at his rear view mirror and almost had a heart attack. That thing was a lot closer than he had initially thought. It was just approaching the back of the ship, now.

Meouch waited anxiously for the  _ ding!  _ that indicated the jet’s startup completion, and once he heard it, he slammed his foot on the accelerator.

Just as he did so, he felt something hit his jet, making it shake back and forth violently. Meouch looked into his rearview mirror, and saw that robot had grabbed a hold of the back of the ship. Shit! He stomped more force onto the accelerator, but the robot was  _ actually  _ holding it back, hindering the jet from moving forward. 

_ You can’t be fucking serious!! _

In a last ditch effort, Meouch looked ahead at the windshield, and slammed his foot as hard as he could on the accelerator. The jet bolted forwards at enormous speeds, and the inertia hit him harder than a train, sending him flying back in his seat. He reached for the yoke, and when he had a tight hold of it, he pushed it upwards as much as he could. The jet began to lift, but it wasn’t taking off as quickly as it should’ve been. It was slow, and the back of the jet was being held down by a heavy weight. Is that robot  _ still  _ hanging on?! 

The jet took off, and sped away from the landing deck into the open universe, but with that huge weight literally dragging the jet down, Meouch knew he wouldn’t get far. He tried to keep steering upwards, but the jet was beginning to lose it’s upwards motion, and the weight of the robot on the back of it was too heavy for the jet to fly properly. Soon enough, it began hurtling down into the depths of space. Meouch suddenly felt his body lift off the seat, fly up, and smack against the roof of the jet. The yoke slipped from his grip. The speed of the jet’s fall increased intensely, and it was so overwhelmingly fast that he could barely move, leaving him stuck to the roof.

Wait, is the jet falling? In space? How is that even possible?

Meouch looked through one of the windows of the jet, and his heart dropped when he saw the  desert-like surface of a planet beneath the ship.

Oh, no.

_ Ohhhh, no. _

From the looks of it, the jet was very quickly approaching the ground, and if Meouch didn’t do something quick, this jet would crash and probably explode on impact.

He stretched his hand out towards the yoke as far as he could reach, and kicked himself off of the roof to propel himself downwards. As soon as he grabbed a hold of the yoke, Meouch kicked around until he was able to plant his feet on one of the walls, giving him balance and leverage. With all of the strength he could muster, he tugged the yoke upwards with all of his might. The jet slowed down tremendously, losing a lot of the speed and acceleration, but still falling at a pretty high speed. He glanced out at the window, and now, from the looks of it, they were just seconds away from making impact. 

Meouch squeezed his eyes shut and braced for impact. He quietly muttered to himself, hoping and wishing for survival.

There was a sudden violent jerk, and a deafening  **_CRASH!_ ** of metal that shattered Meouch’s eardrums. He felt his body jolt forward, and slam unforgivingly onto the ground of the jet. Pain shot through him immediately. He felt a sharp buzzing in his head, and was only able to open his eyes for just a few seconds. All he could see in his blurred vision were flames, so many flames, mangled metal, shattered glass. He just wanted to  _ scream,  _ scream and shout from the agonizing pain shooting through him, but he couldn’t move. Meouch felt his body fall limp, and his vision suddenly cut to black, his mind immediately slipping into unconsciousness. 

 

\------

 

The sound of crackling fire singed into the darkness of Meouch’s conscience. He immediately felt the burning pain swelling in his body, felt the cold harsh wind stinging his opens wounds, felt the return of the agonizing buzzing in his head. He snapped his eyes open, and inhaled sharply.

Meouch, yet again, found himself waking up on the ground, lying on his side.The jet was in the distance, still burning fiercely. He could see a smeared blood trail leading from the crash site to where he was now lying. How did get here?

There was suddenly a cold hand gripping tightly on Meouch’s arm. It pulled Meouch over so that he was now lying on his back.

Meouch screamed at the top of his lungs when he was met with the unwelcoming glare of the robot’s gleaming red eyes just inches from his face. It was crouching over Meouch’s body, just staring at him. Even in this crouched position, it still seemed to tower over him with an intimidating stance. The robot quickly silenced his screams by putting it’s hand over Meouch’s mouth, making his shouts become muffled- though that didn’t stop him from shouting and yelling as loud as he could.

“SHUT UP.” 

A loud monotone voice boomed from the robot, though its mouth didn’t move. Meouch just continued screaming as he clawed at the robot’s hand.   
“BE QUIET OR I WILL END YOU.”

Meouch’s screams slowly dissipated into silence, and he let his hands simply rest on the hand of the robot. He stared up with wide fearful eyes at this menacing thing, his heart beating out of his chest. 

“I HAVE MANY QUESTIONS, AND IF YOU DON’T GIVE ME ANSWERS, THE REST OF YOUR BLOOD WILL SPILL AND STAIN THE SANDS OF THIS DESERT. GOT IT?”

Meouch quickly shook his head in compliance, gulping nervously.

“FIRSTLY: WHO IS PHOBOS?”

Meouch gawked at the robot, then at the hand over his mouth, then back at the robot.

“RIGHT.” It took its hand off of Meouch’s mouth. “NOW TALK.”

“Lord Phobos is my friend, my best friend… Wh--” Meouch was cut off by the robot slapping its hand over his mouth again.

“IS HE THE LITTLE RED ONE WITH THE GOLDEN HELMET?”

Meouch nodded in response.

“HM. HE HAS BEEN TRYING TO CONTACT YOU ON YOUR CELLULAR DEVICE FOR THE PAST SEVEN MINUTES.” It held up Meouch’s phone. 

Meouch tried talking, but the robot forced its hand down more onto his mouth.

“YOU WILL BE ABLE TO CONTACT HIM IF AND ONLY IF YOU GIVE ME ANSWERS.” With that, the robot carelessly tossed Meouch’s phone off to the side, where it landed in the sand. It took its hand off of Meouch’s mouth again. “NOW TELL ME: WHO IS THE CONE MAN.”

A little snicker erupted from Meouch.  _ The cone man! Pfftttt… _

The robot grabbed a hold of Meouch’s shirt and yanked him up towards its face in a threatening manner. “ANSWER ME.”

“Sorry, SORRY!!” Meouch raised his hands in the air defensively. “H-His name is Sung! Doctor Sung!!”

“AND WHAT DOES HE WANT FROM ME? WHY DID HE REVIVE ME? WHAT ARE HIS PLANS?” It shook Meouch more and more vigorously with each question. 

“L-Look, man! He- he just wants to use you as a drummer!” Meouch nervously sputtered out his words as he stared into its red eyes. “He’s like, reprogramming you so you can be a drumming machine for our band!”

“WHAT?”

“He’s… H-He’s gonna rewire you or do some kinda techy shit, I-I dunno, to make you a... fucking drummer! We needed a drummer and h-he just fuckin’ saw you lying around in, like, a cave, and just- he just...”

“HE WHAT?” It shook Meouch again.

‘H-He just brought you home thinking he could turn you into a drummer!! That’s it, man, I-I swear!”

“THAT’S IT? THAT’S WHY HE’S BEEN EXPERIMENTING ON ME CONSTANTLY?” It pulled Meouch closer to its face as its voice boomed even louder. “DRILLING HOLES INTO ME AND HAMMERING AWAY AT ME FOR WEEKS? JUST TO USE ME AS A GODDAMNED DRUMMER?”

“Y-Yeah!!!” Meouch yelled in a shaky voice.

“THAT’S THE STUPIDEST THING I’VE EVER HEARD.”

“I  _ KNOW _ !” Meouch agreed.

The robot took one hand off of Meouch’s shirt, and shoved a finger into his chest. “TELL ME WHERE HE IS. NOW.”

“I… I don’t know!” Meouch gulped. 

“YOU’RE LYING.”

“No, I’m not, I-I’m being serious!! I haven’t seen him in hours, honest!”

“THEN YOU WILL FIND HIS LOCATION, BRING ME TO HIM, AND I’LL END THIS NONSENSE.”

Meouch’s expression shifted a bit. “End? Wh-... You’re not gonna, ya’ know, hurt him… right?”

“HOW STUPID ARE YOU? OF COURSE I’M NOT GOING TO HURT HIM.”

“Oh, thank God, I thou--”

“I’M GOING TO BEAT HIM INTO A BLOODY PULP, TEAR HIM APART LIMB BY LIMB, AND RIP HIS GUTS OUT.”

Meouch fell into a momentary stunned silence as his eyes widened. “W-Wait, no!! He- He doesn’t mean any harm, he ju--”

The robot threw Meouch back onto the ground and yelled, “BULLSHIT. HE SHOVED SCREWDRIVERS INTO MY SIDES AND SLICED ME OPEN EVERY GODDAMNED DAY.” It leaned over Meouch, who was steadily crawling backwards away from it. It angrily followed after him, continuing to speak. “HE TORE APART MY EXTERIORS AND INTERIORS, RIPPED INTO MY WIRING, TWISTED AND BROKE MY LIMBS WITHOUT A CARE. ALL JUST TO USE ME UNTIL I’M BROKEN, THEN TOSS ME AWAY TO DETERIORATE FOR THE NEXT PERSON TO DISCOVER AND USE. FUCK THAT.” 

“H-He won’t just toss you away!!” Meouch pleaded. “He’s a great guy! He goes way too fucking far sometimes, but he has a big heart and he wouldn’t just throw you away like garbage!” 

“IF THAT WERE THE CASE, HE WOULDN’T HAVE CAUSED ME SO MUCH PAIN AND SUFFERING OVER THESE PAST WEEKS. IF THAT WERE THE CASE, THAN I WOULDN’T HAVE HAD BEEN TORN APART AND EXPERIMENTED ON LIKE A DAMN COMPUTER.”

But… it’s a  _ robot.  _ It doesn’t feel pain. Right?

Unless…

“W.. Wait, aren’t you a robot?”

“NO. I AM A CYBORG.”

Meouch gawked at him. “... No offense, but what’s the dif--”

“I HAVE BIOLOGICAL PARTS AT THE ROOTS OF MY MECHANICAL PARTS.”

Meouch’s eyes widened. “Ohh, shit. So you… you felt everything?” He asked in almost a whisper, his shoulders sinking a bit.

“YES, YOU FUCKING IDIOT.”

Meouch’s expression fell. “Okay, okay, real talk.” He stood still as he looked up at the robo-- err, uh, cyborg. “Sung  _ would never  _ have done that shit to you if he knew you could actually feel the pain.”

Even though the cyborg didn’t have eye sockets, Meouch could almost feel it narrowing its eyes in suspicion. “WHAT MAKES YOU SO SURE?”

“Because I know him. He can be a bit of an asshole, but I mean, that’s the case with most people. I’m know an asshole sometimes, and so is he, but he isn’t  _ cruel _ . He’s nowhere near it. Honestly, Sung is one of the kindest, most caring and considerate people I’ve ever met.”

The cyborg just stared at Meouch. 

“Listen, I know you don’t really know me or Sung, but I promise you, Sung’s a nice guy.” Meouch hesitantly got up from the ground, and stood in front of the cyborg. “I’ll… I’ll tell him about you being a cyborg and, ya know, being able to feel pain and stuff. I know he’ll stop experimenting on you once he becomes aware of that. We’ll make you feel right at home.”

“HOME? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT NOW?”

“We’ll… treat you like a real drummer, we won’t just treat you like a hunk o’ cheap metal. We all live together, sooo...”

“I DO NOT DESIRE TO BE A DRUMMER IN THIS MUSIC BAND OF YOURS.”

“... But he spent so much time reproga--”

“I DON’T CARE ABOUT HIS STRIFE. I DIDN’T ASK TO BE REPROGRAMMED INTO A DRUMMER.”

“Yeah, but… I’m sure you’ll like it! Our home is really nice, we’re all bros, all friends. You’ll fit right in!” Meouch nervously chuckled as he tried to convince it. Honestly, he just wanted this thing to come back home with him so he would be in a lot less trouble with Sung. Meouch was already in for a hellish night once he got back and explained everything to him, but if he came back  _ without  _ the new drummer that Sung had slaved to reprogram, Meouch would definitely be out of the band. “C-Come on! It won’t hurt to feel us all out, right? Also… you don’t really have anywhere else to go. Listen, I  _ promise  _ we’ll take you in and make you feel accepted.”

“WHATEVER. I WILL BE THE JUDGE OF THAT.”

Meouch exhaled through his nose, and rubbed his hand over his forehead. “So, you’ll go back to the house with me?”

“YES.”

“And you won’t attack or murder anyone?”

“I WON’T MAKE ANY PROMISES. BUT I WILL DO MY BEST TO KEEP MY ANGER IN CONTROL.”

“... Good enough.”

Meouch breathed out a sigh of relief. Okay, he’s got the homicidal ro-- cyborg somewhat under control. Now, there’s only one problem left to solve. He looked over at the burning jet, and muttered, “How’re we gonna get home, though?”

“PERHAPS DOCTOR SUNG OR LORD PHOBOS CAN ASSIST US.”

Meouch nodded. “Yeah, true. Speaking of Phobos..” He walked over to where his phone landed, and picked it up. After brushing all the sand off of the screen, he unlocked the phone and was met with 17 new messages, all from Phobos. Each text was typed out in all caps.

 

“MEOUCH WHST THE FUCKk DID YOUU DO”

“I’M FINE I’M IN THE HOUSE WHERE THE HELL RE YOU”

‘WHERE ARE YOU”

“MEOUCH”

“MEOUCH????”

 

Meouch sighed out as he typed out his reply.

“Hey, I’m alright. A bit fucked up, but I’m okay. Me and the drummer are kinda stuck on some moon or dwarf-planet or something, it shouldn’t be too far from the ship. The jet crashed, and I don’t really know where the fuck we are. The terrain is really sandy. Can you maybe locate us and pick us up?”

Only two minutes passed before Meouch got a reply from Phobos.

“Okay, thank fuck. Sung and I are on our way now.”

Meouch’s eyes widened. He quickly replied, “Wait I thought he was with Danny???”

Phobos texted back, “I called Sung and told him that you were missing, I had to. He came home as quick as he could to help me find you.”

Meouch felt his stomach churn. Oh,  _ fuck _ .

His nerves intensified when he saw a call notification from Sung ringing on his phone.

He took in a deep breath to prepare himself, and exhaled as he answered the call and put the phone up to his ear.

“Hey, Su--”

“MEOUCH, OH MY GOD, THANK GOD YOU’RE ALIVE. ARE YOU OKAY?! PHOBOS TOLD ME THAT YOU AND OUR DRUMMER ARE STRANDED SOMEWHERE?” 

“Y-Yeah, uhh, I crashed my jet while trying to run away from it, but once we landed, I was able to calm it down. So now we’re just standing around in a desert somewhere.”

He heard Sung sigh over the phone.

“Meouch, I’m…... God, I’m  _ so  _ sorry.”

Meouch’s face twisted in confusion. That was the exact opposite of what he was expecting. “What?”

“I… agh, fuck, I-I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m racking my brain trying to figure out how that thing got loose… I  _ thought  _ I locked up everything when I left the lab the other day, I… maybe I was too tired to think straight, and I somehow messed something up. I don’t know, but whatever I did, or didn’t do, Meouch, I’m so fucking sorry.” His voice began to tremble with emotion. “I put you guys in danger AGAIN, I…”

Ohhh, no. Phobos kept his promise to not tell Sung about Meouch’s plan, but now Sung thinks he’s responsible for the cyborg getting loose. Meouch could already hear Sung breaking down and getting emotional over the phone.

Meouch sighed. As much as he hated what he was about to do, he couldn’t let Sung beat himself up over something he had no control over. 

“No, Sung, it’s- it’s not your fault.”

“Yes, it is!!!” Sung frantically said. His sniffles could be heard on the phone. “It IS my fault! I just went into my lab to see if I could find any clues as to what happened to you, and GOD, I was so disgusted with myself. The last time I was in the lab, I was too tired to even think straight!! I shouldn’t have worked while I was so sleep deprived, Meouch, I’m sorry.”

“Sung--”

“All my notes were fucked up, and my calculations were all wrong, and- and- FUCK, I’m sorry! I-I must’ve just been so fucking tired that I didn’t know what I was doing! I got so caught up in my work that I ended up fucking EVERYTHING up, like  _ everything, _ including the drummer, and..”

“ _ Sung--” _

_ “ _ I’m so fucking sorry! I shouldn't have worked myself to the point where my mind was  _ that  _ fucked up!”

“SUNG, IT WAS ME.”

The line went silent.

“What?” Sung asked in a quiet and confused tone.

“ **I** let the drummer loose, Sung. I… I didn’t mean to, but…”

“Meouch, what are you talking about? How could you have- how-”

“I snuck into your lab while you were out with Danny, and… tampered with a bunch of your notes and computers and stuff,” Meouch admitted in a quiet and ashamed tone. “I was so angry at you for what you said the other day, that I wanted to get back at you. I didn’t expect it to end up like this.”

Again, the line went silent, but for much longer this time.

“... Sung?”

“YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!” Sung’s voice suddenly roared over the phone, causing Meouch to flinch and nearly drop his phone. “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!”

“I-I’m sorry!! I really am!! I didn’t think this shit would happen!” 

“YOU  _ BROKE INTO  _ **_MY LAB?_ ** AS REVENGE? YOU COULDN’T THINK OF ANYTHING LESS DRASTIC, OR- OR LESS DANGEROUS? LESS IDIOTIC? ...  _ FFFUCKING  _ **_HELL_ ** _ , MEOUCH, WHAT THE FUCK!!!” _

“I’M SORRY, ALRIGHT?! I FUCKED UP, I ADMIT.”

“WELL NO SHIT, SHERLOCK, OF COURSE YOU FUCKED UP! YOU FUCKED UP BIG TIME!! YOU PUT EVERYONE IN DANGER ALL OVER SOME REVENGE PLOT?”

“YES, I DID, AND I SAID I’M FUCKING SORRY. BUT CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS LATER? WE’RE KINDA STUCK ON THE DESERT OF SOME UNKNOWN DWARF PLANET RIGHT NOW.”

“WHO’S FAULT IS THAT? GAHH-” Sung took in a few deep breaths, and brought his tone back down, though his anger could still be heard prominent in his voice. “Alright, we’ll… we’ll discuss that later, you’re right. I’ll look through the database on my computer, and try to see if I can find the planet you guys are on.”

“... Thanks.”

“Yeah, whatever. Call you back in a bi--”

“Wait. I’m… I’m really sorry. Like, I genuinely apologize, Sung. I realize that I did something… kinda stupid that really could’ve gotten us all killed. I really hope you can eventually forgive me.” Meouch spoke in such a genuine and serious tone, he even shocked himself.

Silence hung over the line for a moment.

“I’ll apologize, too. What I said the other day  _ was  _ way out of line, and I can’t blame you for being so upset about it. I hope you can forgive me, too.” There was yet another awkward silence. “I’m gonna go and try to locate you guys, and I’ll call you when we’re ready to head out.”

“Alright, see ya.”

“Be careful.” Sung said before hanging up.

Meouch put his phone back in his pocket, then let his shoulders droop. He hung his head, scratching at his mane in silence.

“WELL THAT EXPLAINS A LOT.” The cyborg’s voice blared out from behind Meouch.

Meouch turned around to face the drummer. “How so?” He asked in a dull tone, now walking back over to where it stood.

“THAT EXPLAINS HOW AND WHY I WOKE UP IN THE FIRST PLACE. THAT ALSO EXPLAINS WHY YOU WERE IN THE LAB INSTEAD OF DOCTOR SUNG. WHAT COULD HE HAVE POSSIBLY SAID TO MAKE YOU THAT UPSET?”

Meouch puffed out a breath as he approached the cyborg, then sat down on the sand. “He brought up a… really sensitive topic and used it against me. It was a real dick move.” Sung’s words from that night began echoing through his head again, causing Meouch to curl his lips into a frown. “He brought up my father, and my, uh, family issues.”

“HARSH. I THOUGHT YOU SAID SUNG WAS A KIND PERSON.”

“Heh. He is, but remember that I also said he could be an asshole at times. This was one of those times.”

“AH.” There was a brief moment of quiet before the cyborg spoke again. “FAMILY ISSUES. THEY’RE THAT BAD?”

“...Yeah.” Meouch started drawing in the sand with his finger. “I, um… I don’t talk to them anymore. There was a huge misunderstanding, and… things didn’t turn out great. Nothing can fix it. I’m pretty much the black sheep of the family now. Or, of the planet.”

“WOW. YOU MUST BE AN AWFUL PERSON TO FUCK UP THAT BAD.”

_ “Thanks.”  _ He muttered out in annoyance. “I guess I really am though, huh? Even now. I could’ve gotten us all killed, all over of my pride. I just… I just _ keep fucking up.”  _ Meouch spat out in a sudden rush of anger. He hung his head lower, and spoke in such a low voice that he was pretty much whispering. “I don’t wanna lose this family, too. But it’s probably already too late now.” He let out a quiet sigh. “I’m an idiot.”

“YOU SURE ARE. SNEAKING INTO SOMEONE’S LAB AND LETTING A CYBORG LOOSE IS PRETTY FUCKING DUMB. I MEAN, THAT WAS JUST PLAIN STUPID. YOU SURE DO MAKE A LOT OF FUCKING MISTAKES.”

“FUCK OFF.” Meouch snapped. 

“I’M JUST STATING FACTS.”

Meouch tried to do some deep breathing to recollect himself. A few minutes of quiet went by. 

The ringtone from Meouch’s cell phone broke the silence. Meouch took his phone out of his pocket, accepted the call, and put his phone up to his ear.

“Hey.”

“Hey, Meouch. I think I’ve identified the dwarf planet that you guys are on. Is it day or night right now?”

“Uh,” Meouch looked up at the sky. “I think it’s dusk?”

“Dusk, dusk…” Sung repeated to himself, and the sound of clicking followed soon after. “Is the sky is like, a deep purplish color, with breaks of orange?

“Yeah.”

“Great!, great. Yeah, you guys are on Vaxer 13. It says it’s about a thirty minute drive.”

Thirty minutes? But it only took them a few minutes to crash here. Then again, the jet  _ was  _ going super fucking fast. At normal speed, thirty minutes seems reasonable.

“Alrighty. Be careful on the way here.”

“We will, we’re about to head out now. See you soon.”

The call ended, and Meouch slid his phone back into his pocket without another word.

“MEOUCH.”

“ _ What.”  _ He hissed in reply.

“TELL ME ABOUT THIS HOME OF YOURS. AND ALSO TELL ME ABOUT YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR BANDMATES. I’D LIKE TO KNOW WHAT I’M GETTING MYSELF INTO IN ADVANCE.”

With a sigh, Meouch began. “Well, to start off, our house is pretty fuckin’ dope, as you saw earlier. Sung built it all himself. Like, even the spaceship. He mapped everything out, and built  _ all  _ of that, with the help of some friends. This was before we met him, though. But he’s definitely the brains of the house. He’s got all the cool sciencey, techy stuff.”

“YES, I AM FULLY AWARE.”

“... OH, r-right, right.” Meouch awkwardly cleared his throat. “But, um, yeah. He’s awesome, really fun to be around. He plays the keytar in our band, and also uses a voice box to sing. He’s pretty chill for the most part, but is kind of a neat freak, so be wary of that, haha. He also gets really invested into his work, as you could, uh, probably notice. He’s really animated and high-spirited most of the time, though.” Meouch took a few seconds to pause before he continued on.

“Phobos is my best bud. He doesn’t talk, but he uses this text-to-speech app thingy on his phone for whenever he wants to say something. He’s an awesome friend, a great guy all in all. I can trust him with just about everything. Well, I can say the same about Sung for the most part, too, but moreso with Phobos. Obviously he’s quiet, but he’s really caring and kind, always makes sure that we’re okay. He plays the electric guitar, and he fuckin’ kills that shit, man. It’s so awesome. Oh!, and he’s a great chef, so you’ll definitely enjoy his cooking.”

“AH, YES, I WILL ENJOY SHOVING HIS DELICIOUS FOOD ONTO MY HELMET AND NOT BEING ABLE TO PHYSICALLY CONSUME IT. IT SOUNDS WONDERFUL.”

“Oh, right. So, wait, you have human parts, but you can’t eat or taste anything? But you can feel pain? And you have enough sentience to speak semi-normally. This is confusing.”

Surprisingly, it took the cyborg a moment to answer the question, as if it had to think about how to answer.

“I USED TO BE A PURELY ORGANIC MALE BEING. THAT IS UNTIL I SACRIFICED MY BODY TO BE USED AS THE BASE FOR A MACHINE.”

Meouch perked up at this. “Shit, really?”

“YES.” For a bit, it seemed like it was just going to end his thought there, but then it continued on. “I WANTED TO HELP OUT MY COLLEAGUES, WHO I THOUGHT WERE MY FRIENDS. BUT I WAS AN IDIOT, MUCH LIKE YOU. THEY TURNED ME INTO THIS, FAILING TO INFORM ME THAT I WOULD LOSE A MAJORITY OF MY PHYSICALITIES IN THE PROCESS.”

“That’s fucked up. Like, really fucked up.”

“I AGREE. WHAT IS MORE FUCKED UP IS THAT THEY THEN USED ME AND TREATED ME AS NOTHING MORE THAN A LIFELESS MACHINE, AS IF I WAS A BRAINLESS HEAP OF METAL. AND ONCE I WAS NO LONGER USEFUL TO THEM, THEY DEACTIVATED MY SYSTEMS AND LEFT ME TO ROT AND DECAY IN A FUCKING CAVE FOR DECADES.”

Damn.

Meouch didn’t know how to respond. All he could really say was, “That’s awful. Jeez.”

The cyborg didn’t reply to this. But Meouch went ahead and asked it a question.

“So, what’s your name? Like, the name you had before you were cyborg..ified…?”

“THAT’S NOT A WORD. BUT MY NAME IS HAVVE. HAVVE HOGAN.”

“Havve Hogan,” Meouch repeated. “Interesting.”

“WHY DID YOU ASK?”

“Just because, I dunno, you’re gonna hopefully join the band, and join our family, so I figured I could at least get your name.”

“DON’T TRY TO FOOL ME WITH THAT.”

“What? How am I fooling you?”

“I’M NOT FALLING FOR IT. YOU THINK I’M STUPID ENOUGH TO BELIEVE THAT YOU’LL ACTUALLY TREAT ME LIKE A BANDMATE OR BROTHER OR WHATEVER, INSTEAD OF JUST USING ME AS A SPIRITLESS DRUMMING TOOL? HA. HA. HA. THAT’S FUNNY.”

“Look, I’m being serious. Admittedly, before we knew you were sentient and shit, we probably would’ve just used you like a soulless machine. I’ll be honest.” Meouch shrugged. “But now that we realize that you’re more than that, we’ll treat you like family. You’ll feel right at home. Now, honestly, things are a bit tense right now, so it won’t be as cheerful and fun as usual. But I  _ promise  _ you, once we get back into the groove, you won’t regret staying with us. We’ll all be bros.” Meouch stood up, and held out his open hand. “Promise.”

“PROMISES AND HAND SHAKES MEAN NOTHING TO ME.”

“C’mon, man, this is my way of showing you my sincerity.”

Havve looked down into Meouch’s open hand. He stared at it for a while, contemplating for a long time. Then slowly, almost hesitantly, he gripped Meouch’s hand, and shook it firmly.

Meouch beamed, and shook Havve’s hand with joy. “This is my promise to you, okay?”

“OKAY.”

Havve suddenly tightened his grip on Meouch’s hand, and began crushing it, to which Meouch yelped and shouted, “Ow!! The fuck!?”

“IF YOU GO AGAINST YOUR WORD AND BREAK MY TRUST, YOU WILL PAY DEARLY FOR IT.” Havve threatened as he gave Meouch’s hand one last squeeze before letting go.

Meouch yanked his hand back and massaged it with his other hand as he glared daggers at Havve. “I’m a man of my word, Havve.”

“WE SHALL SEE.”


	6. The Escape from Vaxer 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Meouch and Havve wait to be picked up, they're visited by locals on the planet who don't seem too fond of their presence.

Meouch shut his eyes and wiped beads of sweat off of his face as he sat on the ground. This planet’s sun was blazing fiercely over the desert even as it sunk down into the horizon. He couldn’t wait for Sung to get here and take them home. Well, he dreaded the inevitable confrontation they’d have when he arrived, but he was ready to leave this scorching heat behind. This would be a long thirty minutes. 

A few quiet minutes passed by before a low humming noise slowly rose and interrupted the calm silence. When it was just loud enough for Meouch to hear, he opened his eyes, and saw a couple of sand clouds rising up in the distance over the sand dunes. 

“The hell?” Meouch said aloud, raising an eyebrow.

“WHAT IS IT?” Havve looked down at Meouch.

“You see that?” Meouch pointed towards the sand clouds, to which Havve turned his head to where Meouch was pointing. “Does it look like those sand clouds are getting closer?”

After a few seconds of observation, Havve responded, “YES, IT CERTAINLY DOES.”

“Shit. Is that a sandstorm?” Meouch asked, glancing up at Havve.

“NO. IT’S NOT LARGE ENOUGH TO BE A SAND STORM.”

“Hm.” Meouch stared at the gradually approaching sand clouds. “You think, maybe… there’s, like,-”

“A GROUP OF PEOPLE APPROACHING US?”

“Yeah!, yeah.”

“IT’S POSSIBLE. PERHAPS THEY ARE RESIDENTS OF THIS PLANET.”

Meouch nodded, then narrowed his eyes to get a closer look at the sand clouds. The humming noise was gradually getting louder just as the clouds drew closer, quickly drifting over sand dunes.

“You think they’re accepting of foreigners?”

“DON’T BE SO HOPEFUL.”

Meouch could now see the faded silhouettes of strange vehicles hidden within the sand clouds. He got up, stood next to Havve, and they both watched as the vehicles drove towards them and came within close proximity.

The vehicles slowed to a stop once they were within a few yards of Havve and Meouch. Once the sand clouds drifted off and dissipated, the vehicles were revealed. They all ranged in size, some being small little rovers, and others being a bit more massive in size- hell, some of them were levitating above the sand. Their exteriors were made of a faded-golden looking material, and there were black tinted windows on some of the vehicles.

Meouch and Havve glanced at each other, then looked back at the bots and vehicles before them. They waited for the doors to open, or for one of the vehicles to do something, maybe. But nothing happened. They all just sat or levitated there, making weird robotic noises every so often.

“... Maybe they’re friendly?” Meouch raised an eyebrow.

Just on cue, an extremely loud screech emitted from one of them, and all of the others followed suit. Meouch’s eyes widened. They all then started whirring, and strange lights shone from them. Meouch and Havve took a step back as a barrage of odd-looking pods shot out of one of the vehicles, and flew into the air. The pods flew around wildly, and some began to transform into creatures of varying sizes, shapes, and colors. When they fell to the ground, they immediately charged after Havve and Meouch.

Meouch was about to run away, but Havve ran directly towards the creatures. 

“Havve, wait! What if th--”

“STOP TALKING AND HELP ME FIGHT THESE THINGS,” Havve yelled out as he swung his robotic fists around and struck some of them.

“But-” Before Meouch could finish, he was quickly tackled to the ground by one of the creatures. It screeched and leered in Meouch’s face as Meouch struggled to get it off of him, and as it went raised its claws to attack, Meouch headbutted it, and it went flying off of with a squeal. 

Meouch quickly stood up, and found himself surrounded by a gang of creatures, all varying in design, and all circled around him ready to strike. Meouch took in a breath and braced himself. He bared claws from his fingers, and had a staredown with them all, darting his gaze around to look them all in the eye (or their anatomical equivalent of an eye). 

In a flash, Meouch lunged at them all at once, stabbing and clawing at them to fend himself and attack as many as he possibly could at once. The vividly colored blood of the creatures’ sprayed and spilled onto the floor along with their lifeless bodies. Meouch was handling himself pretty well, but it seemed like more and more of them just kept coming at him, no matter how many he fought off. It was as though he’d kill three in a row just for another three new creatures to attack him. Soon enough, they were beginning to overpower him, latching themselves onto him, biting and scratching into his flesh in gradually increasing amounts. Meouch cried out in pain while he tried to fight them off, but he was slowly losing to their numbers.

“HAVVE!!” He called out as he tried kicking and punching the creatures off of him.

“WHAT IS IT?” Havve boomed over the loud chaos whilst literally tearing creatures apart limb from limb, various colors of blood splattering onto his metal exterior.

“THERE’S TOO MANY OF THEM! THEY JUST KEEP COMING. WE CAN’T- AGH, FUCK!- HOLD THEM OFF!” Meouch yelled out, struggling to rip off one particularly pesky creature that clung to his chest.

“SPEAK FOR YOURSELF.” 

Havve threw a mini-bot down to the ground, and stomped on it. Vivid green blood exploded from its corpse when he did so. He then ran over to Meouch, who was practically drowning in the sea of creatures that crowded around him, and barreled through a large amount of them, punching and pummelling them into metal scraps. But even Havve quickly became overwhelmed by the amount of them attacking him. They all swarmed over the two, slowly overpowering their strengths.

“PERHAPS YOU WERE CORRECT.”

“YA’ THINK!?” Meouch screamed out in annoyance. 

Havve rammed through the crowd of bots towards Meouch, and without any warning, he ducked down, grabbed Meouch’s sides, picked him up and tossed him up onto his shoulder. Meouch yelped as he was suddenly scooped up off of his feet. As soon as Meouch was slumped over his shoulder, Havve used his arm to hold him down secure, stood up, and carried him as he began darting away from the creatures. They followed after them immediately.

“Thanks, Havve,” Meouch said in an appreciative yet shocked voice. He ripped off the remaining creatures from his limbs, and threw them back towards the other ones that were chasing after them. He tried speaking over the hectic noise coming from behind them. “Where do we go?”

“ANYWHERE AWAY FROM HERE.”

Meouch flinched when he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. Once he realized that it just his phone, he reached back into his pocket and pulled the phone out. Sung was calling him. He answered, and put the phone up against his ear.

“Hey, Meo--”

“HEY, SUNG.” Meouch yelled over the phone.

“H-Hey, man. I was j--... What’s all that noise? Is everything okay over there?”

“Uhh, we’re in a bit of a predicament right now.” He said with a panicky tone.

“A predicament? Jesus, what’d you guys do now?”

“We didn’t do anything! These random ass robot things just started attacking us outta nowhere!”

Sung went quiet for a second.

“Heh, hehe, right…” Sung nervously chuckled as his voice drifted off. “I, uh, may have forgotten to mention that the dwarf planet you’re on has some, um,--”

“FUCKING DEATH ROBOTS? YEAH, I NOTICED.”

“I-I forgot to tell you guys. Sorry?” Sung said in an apologetic voice. 

“GOD, YOU’RE THE WORST.”

Havve yelled out, “HOW MUCH LONGER IS IT GOING TO TAKE FOR SUNG TO GET HERE?” as he continued running away.

Meouch repeated the question to Sung.

“Uhh, well, we’re about halfway there, now. Haha, and we’re living on a prayer, too.” Sung giggled over the phone.

“I’M GLAD YOU’RE HAVING FUN WHILE WE RUN FOR OUR FUCKING LIVES, SUNG.” 

“Sorry!, sorry, I had to. Just… just trying to lighten the mood a bit to keep from freaking out.” He chuckled nervously. “But no, we’re about halfway there. I’m gonna put this bad boy in overdrive to speed up the trip, so we should be there in… ten minutes? Five, depending on how fast this thing can go? I’m not sure, I’ve never used the overdrive in this jet before. I’m using our cargo jet, so the drummer can fit inside.”

Meouch half-listened to Sung as he went on and on about their rarely-used cargo jet, keeping most of his attention on the robots and creatures chasing close behind them. “O-Okay, just get here as fast as you can. I don’t know how much longer we can hold them off.”

“Alright, we’ll be there in a flash. Stay safe, guys! We’re on our way!”

Meouch hung up, and put his phone back in his pocket.

“Okay, so… what’s the plan?” He asked, turning his head back as much as he could to Havve.

“RUN LIKE HELL UNTIL THEY GET HERE.”

“Uh, any other specifics?”

“NO.”

“... Alright.” Meouch nonchalantly shrugged and looked back at their pursuers. “Will you be able to keep running? Do you have stamina?”

“NO, I DO NOT HAVE STAMINA. THAT IS ONE OF THE PLUSES OF BEING A CYBORG. I MAY HAVE LOST A MAJORITY OF MY PHYSICALITY, BUT AT LEAST I CAN RUN AS MUCH AS I PLEASE.”

“That’s…  _ one  _ way of looking at it, I guess.”

So Havve ran. And ran, and ran, and ran.

God, he ran for so fucking long that Meouch was just in utter awe. And he ran so damn  _ fast,  _ too, consistently keeping up his high speed _.  _ It was amazing, and frightening. Very frightening. Meouch was glad to be on his good side, now.

Yet somehow, those creatures were still on their asses. Havve ran over and around so many sand dunes, and they still persisted without missing a beat.

Meouch couldn’t even tell how much time had passed, all he knew was that it felt like an eternity while Havve carried him. He perked up when he heard the low hum of an engine coming from somewhere nearby. He looked around, but found nothing at first. The roar became louder, closer. When Meouch finally looked up to the sky, he saw a huge jet flying in the purple sky.

“IS THAT HIM?”

“Yeah, that looks our cargo jet,” Meouch responded, smiling.

“THANK FUCK.”

Meouch watched as the jet swooped down, and hovered dozens of feet above the desert. It flew in not too far beside (and slightly above) him and Havve, maintaining nearly the same speed that Havve was running at. The door closest to them slid open, and in the doorway stood Phobos, who waved excitedly to Meouch.

“Phobos!!” Meouch called and waved back gleefully. “God, buddy, am I glad to see you!”

Phobos gave him two hearty thumbs up in response.

“IF YOU STAND UP ON MY SHOULDER, WILL YOU BE ABLE TO REACH THE JET TO GET INSIDE?” Havve asked.

Meouch looked at the large gap between them and the ship, then at Havve. “No, but I can try to get them to move closer to us.” He then looked up at Phobos. “Hey, tell Sung to move closer!!!”

Phobos nodded, and ran back inside. Moments later, the jet began to slowly move in towards them, lessening the gap between them and the jet. Phobos came back to the open door, raised a thumbs up, and tilted his head in a questioning manner.

After looking at the short distance between him and the ship, Meouch replied,“Yeah, this is perfect!”

Phobos nodded, and extended an open hand out towards Meouch.

“Alright, I’m gonna try to get on now,” Meouch said, looking over at Havve.

“GOOD LUCK.” Havve lifted his arms up, grabbed Meouch’s sides, and lifted him off of his shoulders a bit.

Meouch carefully moved his foot onto Havve’s shoulder, and tried to keep his balance as he pushed himself to stand. He held on to Havve’s head to keep himself steady, but it was pretty difficult trying to keep balance while on the shoulder of a cyborg running at full speed. Once he stood up fully and had enough balance and steadiness, he took in a deep breath, and jumped from Havve’s shoulder into the air and towards the jet. Phobos reached out and grabbed Meouch’s wrist successfully, leaving Meouch dangling from his grip. Phobos then pulled him up, and Meouch climbed into the jet with his friend’s help. Once Meouch was inside, he couldn’t resist throwing his arms around Phobos and giving him a huge hug.

“I’m sorry, man,” Meouch said as he rubbed Phobos’ back. “I’m glad you’re okay.” Phobos returned the hug, patting Meouch’s back. Meouch squeezed him tightly before letting go, and turned around to look out at Havve. “Alright, this might be a bit of a problem,” he muttered. “Hang on, Havve! We’ll get ‘ya!”

“YOU BETTER.” Havve yelled out to him.

Meouch looked over at Sung, who was sitting in the pilot’s chair staring at him. “...Hey.” He said in a hesitant yet enthusiastic tone.

“Heeeeeyyyy, Meouch!” Sung said in a weird voice as he half smiled.

God, this is awkward. 

“Can you lower the jet for Havve?”

“Yeah, no pr-- for who?”

“Havve!” When Meouch received a confused silence in response, he said, “The drummer!”

Sung had such a bewildered look on his face. “... O-Oh. Okay.” He replied in a confused tone, then looked down at the yoke as he began to push down on it.

Meouch felt the jet starting to sink lower to the ground. He turned back to the open door and looked down at Havve. 

“Alright, we’re gonna get you up now. Hold on tight.” He glanced over at Phobos for a second and said, “Phobos, help me carry him up.”

Phobos nodded, and the two of them held out their hands to Havve. Havve reached out, and grabbed onto Meouch’s hand with a tight grip. Meouch held tightly onto him, and used his other hand to grab onto his arm and heave him up a bit. Havve then grabbed onto Phobos’ hand, and with him and Meouch’s combined strength, they lifted him up high off of the ground. Even with both of their strengths, they struggled and strained their muscles to hold him up. Havve dangled from Meouch and Phobos’ grips, and just as they were struggling to fully lift him up onto the ship, suddenly a laser shot right past Havve’s face, only inches away from hitting him.

“The fuckl!?” Meouch looked over at the robots and creatures. Of course, they were still on Havve’s heels, but now some of them had laser guns extending out from them, and had them aimed right at the jet.

“Fucking… ugh, c’mon, c’mon,” Meouch said in a rushed tone as he hurried to lift Havve. More and more lasers were being shot in their direction now. He and Phobos used all of their strength to pull him up, and in a few struggle-filled moments, Havve was finally able to lift his leg up onto the ledge, and with their help, climbed up successfully into the jet.

Meouch rejoiced with a “Yes!” as he raised his hand for a high five, slightly bent over and breathing heavily. When Havve just stared at him for a while and left him hanging, Meouch defeatedly put his hand down. Phobos slid the door shut behind them.

“Alrighty! We’re headin’ home!” Sung cheerfully sang out as he pulled the yoke upwards, which made the jet fly up into the sky.

“THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE.” Havve said to Phobos and Meouch. 

Meouch breathed out a sigh of relief and panted out, “No problem.”

Phobos nodded and gave Havve a thumbs up.

After Meouch took some time to collect his breath, he looked over at Phobos, and spoke. “Phobos, this is Havve Hogan.” He weakly pointed to him, then turned to Havve. “Havve, this is Lord Phobos. I mean, you guys already met, but...”

Havve walked over to Phobos. “IT’S A PLEASURE MEETING YOU AGAIN. I WOULD SAY THAT I AM SORRY ABOUT TRYING TO KILL YOU EARLIER TODAY, BUT THAT WOULD BE A LIE.” He held out his hand to Phobos. Phobos, after a moment of staring, hesitantly shook his hand.

There was a loud  _ bang!,  _ and the jet suddenly jerked and shook violently, causing things to go flying everywhere, and for the three of them to all to nearly lose balance and fall.

“What was that!?” Sung yelled out from his seat.

“No idea.” Meouch said in a panic. He ran to the back of the ship, and looked out of the back window. He sighed out in dismay.

“Sung, you’re not gonna believe this.”

“What? What is it?”

“They’re still after us.”

“You’re _ joking!”  _

Meouch watched through the window as some of the creatures took off from the ground and flew directly behind their jet, shooting their lasers at it.

“These things are persistent as hell.” Meouch turned to face Havve and Phobos.

Phobos had his phone in his hand. It rang out, “what do we do?”

“WE SHOOT BACK AT THEM AND OBLITERATE THEM.”

“He’s actually right,” Sung chimed in. “Those things aren’t gonna give up until either they die, or we die. And the latter isn’t an option.” He turned his head to look back at the three of them. “I have spare laser guns in this compartment.” Sung took one hand off of the yoke to pat on a shelf on the dashboard, then put his hand back on the yoke. “You guys can get on the roof and shoot those things down.”

Phobos ran over, opened the compartment, and took out three laser guns. He ran back over to Havve and Meouch, and tossed a gun to each of them.

“Where did you even get these?” Meouch asked, looking down at his gun and taking note of it’s top-notch detailing and quality. These were top of the line weapons- hell, Meouch contemplated whether or not these were legal in this quadrant of the universe. “And how come we never knew about them being in that shelf?”

“Like I said before, we rarely use this ship! I forgot I even had them here,” Sung replied.

“That didn’t really answer either of my questions.”

The jet once again shook from the impact of one of the lasers hitting a major part of the jet’s exterior. Meouch stumbled to keep himself balanced. “Alright, um, how are we gonna get to the roof?”

“I’m gonna let down the ladder so you guys can climb up.” Sung pressed a button on the control panel, and from the middle of the jet’s ceiling descended a ladder that lead up to a metal hatch. “Please be careful, guys. Seriously.”

“We will,” Meouch assured before running over to the ladder, and beginning his climb up. Phobos and Havve followed after him.

Once Meouch reached the top, he unlocked the hatch, pushed it open, and climbed out onto the open roof where he was struck with the rush of brisky wind. He looked out at the vast deep indigo night sky around him, taking in its wonder for a brief moment before stepping out of the way of Havve and Phobos, who were both on their way up.

After Phobos and Havve climbed up onto the roof, Havve asked over the sound of lasers, “WHERE ARE THOSE PESKY ASSHOLES?”

Meouch pointed to the back edge of the jet. “Over there! Ready your weapons, men-,” he stated in a commanding voice, then shook his head and closed his eyes, correcting himself by saying, “er, uh, guys. Sorry, sorry.” He sighed a breath through his nose, opened his eyes, and jogged over to the back while Havve and Phobos trailed after him, their feet pounding on the metal ground beneath them.

When the three of them reached the edge of the jet, they looked out at the flying creatures who were chasing after the jet and firing their lasers.

“Alright, now let’s shoot those fuckers down. You guys ready?” Meouch looked over at them as he cocked his gun.

Phobos nodded quickly.

Havve responded, “I AM MOST CERTAINLY READY.” 

With an affirmative nod, Meouch turned to the creatures behind them, and immediately began firing shot after shot, already shooting down a few of them. Phobos and Havve had a hell of a harder time firing their guns, missing their targets by longshots. After a few of the flying bots either blew up on impact or went falling down into the desert beneath them, the rest of them redirected their aim from the jet to Havve, Phobos, and Meouch.

Meouch dodged the lasers with ease as he continued firing back, aiming with only one hand and firing at them with impeccable aim. Most of his shots were one hit kills, meanwhile Phobos and Havve struggled to hit their targets and were just barely dodging the lasers being shot at them. Man, it was taking  _ everything  _ in Meouch to not flip out at them and let his ex-commander self slip out.

“Ya know, I thought you’d be better at this, Havve.” Meouch said in a half teasing, yet half irritated tone.

“SHUT UP.” Havve yelled, missing yet another shot.

Creatures were dying off left and right, mainly due to Meouch, and were quickly decreasing in numbers. But there was pesky one left that was very elusive, dodging Meouch’s shots at the very last second and firing a shitton of lasers at them.

“C’mon…” Meouch gritted through his teeth as he fired shot after shot at this last creature whilst dodging its lasers. Every shot he made, he was sure would be the one to finally hit it, but each time it would fly out of the way just in time to avoid being hit. Just as he went to take a shot that he was sure would hit it, the jet took a sudden sharp turn. He was quickly thrown off balance, and his shot went flying nowhere near the creature. “ _ Dammit!”  _

“YOU KNOW, I THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE BETTER AT THIS, MEOUCH.” Havve mocked.

Meouch snapped his head around to look at him in annoyance. “FUCK OFF, HAVVE--  _ GAH- _ !” He suddenly felt a scorching hot laser burn into the flesh of his stomach. Meouch keeled over and clutched at the sizzling injury, groaning out in agony. “FUCK.”

“PAY ATTENTION, YOU IDIOT,” Havve said, looking down at him.

“ _ FUCK YOU!”  _ Meouch spat out, kneeling down and trying to recuperate. One could literally hear his flesh frying in the burning heat of the shot. He fired his gun aimlessly at the creature and missed his shots by landslides, but it was actually Phobos who finally shot it down in pure luck. Phobos would’ve celebrated his lucky shot had Meouch not been in distress.

Just as Phobos went over to help Meouch, the jet suddenly took another sharp turn, which knocked everyone off balance again. Meouch, being in his pained state while kneeling on the floor, couldn’t react in time to keep his balance. He was thrown to the floor on his back, and was sent rolling dangerously close towards the edge. “Fuck, fuck, FUCK!” he yelled as he tried to stop himself, but couldn’t get enough grip or balance to do so. 

“MEOUCH,” Havve called out as he ran to try and stop Meouch as he tumbled down towards the edge.

Meouch clawed at the metal flooring to try to stop himself, but none of his efforts worked. In an instant, he felt the floor beneath him slip away, felt the gravity clutch his body and drag him down towards the desert thousands of feet below him. He screamed as he went plummeting downwards, but abruptly stopped after he felt a hand clutch onto his ankle. He dangled upside down from his ankle, swinging back in forth wildly while his mane blew in the wind. The pain in his stomach sharpened as he hung, but he couldn’t even do anything to soothe it in this position.

He looked up, and was surprised to see Havve himself hanging over the edge, one hand clinging onto the edge of the jet, and the other holding onto Meouch’s ankle.

“MEOUCH. YOU NEED TO BE MORE CAREFUL,” Havve said. “THAT COULD’VE EASILY BEEN THE END OF YOU, YOU KLUTZ.”

Meouch just stared up at him, stunned and temporarily speechless. Havve actually put himself at risk to catch him? The thought truly boggled his mind.

Havve began to swing Meouch’s body back and forth with gradually increasing force.

“Agh, Havve, w-what are you d--”

With an unimaginable amount of force, Havve swung Meouch upwards into the air towards the jet, causing Meouch to erupt into screams and shouts as he flung into the air and flailed his arms around. Meouch landed with a harsh  _ thud!  _ on the roof of the jet, crashing face first onto the ground. He groaned out in pain as he laid there, trying to recuperate. 

Phobos ran over to Havve to help him back up onto the roof of the jet.

“THANK YOU, LORD PHOBOS,” Havve said as he grabbed onto Phobos’ hand and climbed up onto the roof of the jet. The two of them then walked over to Meouch, who was still lying on the ground. Havve looked down at him, and said, “I HAD NO OTHER CHOICE. I HOPE YOU CAN FORGIVE ME FOR THAT.”

“It’s fine, I guess,” Meouch mumbled, his face still on the floor. He tried to push himself off of the ground, but didn’t succeed, falling back down with a defeated groan.

Havve grabbed Meouch’s arm, and Phobos did the same with his other arm. They both pulled Meouch up to his feet.

“Thanks, Havve. You too, Phobos.” 

Phobos rubbed Meouch’s back.

“NOT A PROBLEM. LET’S GET YOU INSIDE AND SEE IF WE CAN DO ANYTHING ABOUT THAT WOUND,” Havve said as he and Phobos walked Meouch over to the hatch.

“Ahah, aww. You gettin’ soft on me, Havve?” 

“DON’T MAKE ME REGRET THIS ACT OF KINDNESS ALREADY, YOU NUMBSKULL.”


	7. Settling In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After they all return home, the four bandmates settle down and try to wind down from their wild day.

The sound of clanking pots and pans echoed from the kitchen into the living room, where Meouch sat in the middle of the couch, picking at the loose ends of the bandages wrapped around his stomach.

“don’t mess with that,” Phobos’ phone rang out as Phobos sunk down in the couch next to Meouch.

“Sorry. My nerves are a bit fucked up, I guess. Heh.”

“it’s fine. i just don’t want them to come undone, and then you’d have to get it all re-wrapped. sung is coming with some painkillers now.”

“Alright, cool.” Meouch patted around for the TV remote, and when he found it, he held it up to the TV and pressed the power button. He looked over at Phobos.“Wait, doesn’t he have some kind of instant healing serum or somethin’ like that?”

“I _did,”_ Sung said as he walked into the room with a bottle of pills and a mug of tea. “Until you poured it all down the drain along with most of my other medicines and remedies.” He raised an eyebrow as he put the bottle and mug down on the table in front of Meouch.

“Heh, yeah, uh, about that…” Meouch gave a guilty smile as he scratched the back of his neck.

Sung sighed. “It’s fine. You already apologized. And I’d like to hope you’ve learned your lesson in all this.”

“Yeah, definitely.” Meouch picked up the mug, and blew it before taking a sip.

“Though, I guess something good did come out of it. Now that I know that Havve’s a cyborg, I won’t do any more experiments on him. That’s why he kept attacking me, because I was technically attacking him! Haha, whoops.” He tried to smile, but it quickly fell into a frown. “I still feel awful about that.”

“hey, you didn’t know,” Phobos comforted him.

“Yeah,” Meouch chimed in. “Havve seemed pretty cool with your apology, don’t beat yourself up about it.” He turned his head and looked around the room. “Uh, where _is_ Havve, now that I think about it.”

“Oh, he’s in the kitchen.”

“Why?”

“... Good question,” Sung admitted as he furrowed his brows in confusion. “Hey, Havve!!” He called out, turning to look at the kitchen door.

Havve walked out of the kitchen door and stood there with a butcher knife in his hand. Both Sung and Meouch’s faces fell into dismay.

“What, uh...,” Sung began in a hesitant voice, his suspicious wide eyes darting frantically between Havve and the butcher knife he held.“Whatcha doin’ with that knife?”

“OH, NOTHING.” Havve raised it in the air. “I WAS SIMPLY ADMIRING IT.” He then took his hand and gently caressed the blade.

“Can you, um... put that down? Please?” Sung asked in a pleading voice.

Havve stared back him at him silence for a moment. “FINE. PERHAPS ANOTHER TIME,” he said before walking back into the kitchen.

Meouch and Sung sighed out with relief. The three of them then chuckled as they stared at each other knowingly. Havve emerged from the kitchen once more, this time making his way over to them.

“Hey, you wanna watch TV with us?” Meouch asked, patting the open seat on the couch next to him.

Havve didn’t respond for a few seconds. He just stared at them for a while before eventually uttering, “WHAT?”

“Do you…. you wanna watch some TV? There should be enough space on the couch for you to sit.”

Again, more staring.

“IS THIS SOME KIND OF CRUEL JOKE.”

“What? No!” Meouch insisted. Phobos waved for him to come over, and Sung did too.

“Yeah, _Guess that Galaxy!_ is coming on in a bit, it’s one of our favorite shows,” Sung added with a smile. “C’mon, join us!”

Havve slowly approached the three of them, glancing over at the TV before looking at the seat on the couch.

“YOU WANT ME TO SIT HERE? AND WATCH TELEVISION WITH YOU?”

“Yeah!” Sung said.

“it’s how we bond as a band. :)”

Meouch nodded in agreement, and again, patted the spot next to him on the couch.

Havve continued to stare down at it, then slowly turned around, and sank into the fluffy cushions.

A wide grin spread onto Meouch’s face as he patted Havve’s back. “I’m sure you’ll love this show. We always have a great time watching it,” he assured, then turned to the TV.

“I’m gonna go and order some pizza,” Sung said before pulling out his phone. “Do you have a favorite topping, Havve?”

“NO. I AM PHYSICALLY INCAPABLE OF CONSUMING FOODS.”

“... Right, sorry. I’ll just get the usual for the rest of us.”

Just as Sung dialed the number to the nearest pizza shop, the theme song of _Guess that Galaxy!_ rang from the TV.

“... THANK YOU.”

Meouch turned to Havve. “For what?”

“EVERYTHING. EXCEPT FOR THE EXPERIMENTATIONS. FUCK THOSE. BUT I… APPRECIATE YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF ME.”

Meouch smiled. “No problem, buddy.”

“we’re glad to take you in.”

“Yeah,” Sung agreed while waiting for the pizza place to pick up the phone. “Tomorrow, we can even start practicing together! As a complete band, finally!!” He cheered with a joyful grin. “Aaah!, I’m so excited! Do you remember everything about the drumming I programmed into you, Havve?”

“WHY, YES. HOW COULD I POSSIBLY FORGET THE INFORMATION THAT YOU LITERALLY DRILLED INTO MY FUCKING SKULL.”

Meouch held back laughter, and threw his head into his hands as he silently chuckled. Sung just stared at Havve with guilt and embarrassment.

“Nevermind that,” Meouch said while quieting down his laughter. After bringing his head back up, he went on to say, “Let’s just enjoy the show.”

“Y-Yeah, let’s… let’s do that.” Sung agreed in a nervous tone.

As simply as that, their long night of marathoning began, and for the first time in weeks, that house felt like a home again, a home filled with the laughter of four bandmates, four bros- a family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you guys enjoyed!! it was a lot of fun to write and im so glad i decided to join, it was definitely worth it c: thanks to everyone, and thanks for reading to the end of this long ass thing!


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